Over at RedState, my colleague Neil Stevens reminds the world that Known and Unknown: A Memoir
Also, check out The Rumsfeld Papers, which is a site that will host the documents referenced in Rumsfeld’s book. There’s a buzz about that kind of access that’s completely separate from the book’s (as of this date) #1 status on Amazon.
I was sent the link to an ABC sit-down with former Secretary Rumsfeld about his upcoming memoir Known and Unknown (coming out February 8th), mostly because it’s fairly well-known that this is one of the few political books that I’m actually looking forward to reading. If for no other reason than because the man has a definite poetic impulse in there, lurking:
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because, as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know,” he said. “There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know.”
Was it Slate who pointed it out, first? – Well, even if they did I remember that they were kind of sneering about it; but it’s not really justified. The above makes perfect sense… if you bother to read it.
Moe Lane
I picked Betty Crocker’s New Cookbook for a pretty simple reason: I just got a thank-you note from a couple of friends who got married recently, and it referenced cooking. Well, this is a cookbook that I have found invaluable, particularly since I’m the one who cooks dinner for the family. You see, I know how to follow a recipe, and I know how to adapt a recipe, so arguably I know how to cook… but I don’t know how to cook a lot of the stuff that I like to eat. If you know how to follow directions, but you lack the knowledge base past “put foil on pan. Put meat on foil. Put dial on broil and wait until meat is cooked through” then this book will help you with your secret shame. It will tell you how to make lemonade – and don’t laugh; the proportions are not immediately obvious.
And so we… move… Known and Unknown: A Memoir
Known and Unknown: A Memoir is, obviously, the new book coming out next month by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Apropos of nothing in particular, the title made my (much less political) wife laugh in appreciation of its wittiness – or cheekiness – which gives me some hope that the text will be as good. It certainly will make the Usual Suspects start screaming…
And thus, The Arrival… departs.
While the exceptionally sad and silly nature of the organized antiwar movement is of course obvious to anyone with a functional notochord, it’s not as common to see their favorite political pornographers sink to their level. After all, said pornographers are self-aware parasites – and as such are almost required to be smarter than their victims. But every so often you encounter one who forgets the first rule of the successful drug dealer: Don’t sample your own merchandise – and they get hooked.
Continue reading Antiwar left tries to get a piece of Known & Unknown action.
This is, alas, not yet available on Amazon.com – but it’s the memoirs of Donald Rumsfeld, and I for one have been looking forward to reading it for a while.
It promises to be quite fascinating, in fact: the press release from Sentinel (division of Penguin) indicated that the book would feature “plainspoken, first-hand views and often humorous and surprising anecdotes about some of the world’s best known figures, from Margaret Thatcher to Saddam Hussein, from Henry Kissinger to Colin Powell, from Elvis Presley to Dick Cheney, and each American president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush.”
(pause)
Elvis, huh?
That one sounds particularly interesting. At any rate, no Amazon listing means no widget, so I suppose that Blameless can stay up for another week.
Moe Lane
