Every Day Is Extra

John Kerry’s fat new memoir “reminds you why he would probably have made a very good president,” said Dwight Garner in The New York Times. “It also reminds you why he lost.” Like its patrician author, the book is “reserved and idealistic and reassuringly dull.” It commits a full 300 pages to the author’s life since defeat by George W. Bush—meaning his recent diplomacy gets far more play than, say, Vietnam or the 2004 campaign. If nothing else, “it’s been a big life, packed with incident.”