Book reports

Nicholas Lemann on "Big Russ," which sounds as exciting and life-affirming as his graduation address.

Just after the September 11th attacks, Russert bags an interview at Camp David with Cheney. Beforehand, naturally, he calls Big Russ for advice, and it is “Just let him talk. Let him help get us through this.” Bingo: “Dad was so right. Without his advice, I would have focused mostly on the future, on our response to terrorism.” Instead, though we now know that planning for the war in Iraq was already under way, he had Cheney reminisce about 9/11. On the drive home, he checks back in with Big Russ. “That was great. Thank you,” he says. A year later, with war plainly on the horizon, Russert gets another interview with Cheney. The Vice-President’s manner—gruff, plainspoken, and perpetually alert to the world’s manifold perils—could have been custom-designed to have a positive effect on Big Russ’s son. I’m going to put an excerpt from the interview up on the screen, just to show you the distinctly respectful tone that Cheney brings out in Russert:

cheney: This just isn’t a guy who’s now back trying once again to build nuclear weapons. It’s the fact that we’ve also seen him in these other areas, in chemicals, but also especially in biological weapons, increase his capacity to produce and deliver these weapons upon, upon his enemies.
russert: But if he ever did that, would we not wipe him off the face of the Earth?
cheney: Who did the anthrax attack last fall, Tim? We don’t know.
russert: Could it have been Saddam?
cheney: I don’t know. I don’t know who did it. I’m not here today to speculate on or to suggest that he did. My point is that it’s the nature of terrorist attacks of these unconventional warfare methods, that it’s very hard sometimes to identify who’s responsible.

And Michael Kinsley on the Bobo's new book, "On Paradise Drive."

These riffs will not win prizes for internal consistency. In the Fry! discussion, there are detours into the culture of frequent flier points and the obsession with upgrades, among other topics. These are hilarious, but Brooks seems to forget his premise that Fry! is about monomania. That hardly matters if he's not trying to be serious. But he is trying to be serious, at least sometimes. He says he wants to rescue American civilization from the charge that it is shallow, and his main argument against that charge is that seemingly shallow behavior like shopping for the perfect barbecue or marketing the perfect French fry is actually a deeply spiritual quest, on a continuum with those of the Pilgrims arriving from the east and the pioneers heading west. We're certainly not going to buy that notion if the author himself can be distracted from it whenever the possibility of a good joke floats by.