Reviewing Power and Rice

Barton Swaim has recently reviewed the memoirs of Samantha Power and Susan Rice.

He writes that “Ms. Power dwells on the Syria episode in the book’s preface, at length in the aforementioned chapters, and once again in a later chapter. And for good reason: Her career is defined, tragically and indelibly, by her failure to respond to Mr. Obama’s failure to respond.”

Here’s his last paragraph:

What’s most offensive to this reviewer, however, is her [Susan Rice’s] decision to place these narrow self-vindications within a 500-page book full of family anecdotes and hokey adages and tedious renditions of policy views. Both Ms. Power’s and Ms. Rice’s apologias might have worked well, shorn of banalities, as 5,000- or 6,000-word essays for the New Yorker or the Atlantic. But an essay doesn’t slake the thirst for vainglory.

His piece appears in The Wall Street Journal.