Last week when former defense secretary Robert Gates appeared on Jon Stewart's program, I was intrigued enough by the conversation that I ordered the Kindle of his new book. I'm still wading through it but I've gotten far enough to agree with the claim that a lot of people are trying to yank quotes out of it to score political points that don't reflect the totality of Mr. Gates's views. Fred Kaplan didn't do that. His review strikes me as a very fair summary of what I'm reading. He's especially right when he notes how Gates, in several places, says something like, "I was offended that the president thought I would write about this," and Gates says this right after he writes about that thing. Anyway, this is definitely not a book that makes the case that George W. Bush was a terrible president or that Barack Obama is a terrible president, despite the efforts of some to portray it as one or the other. A lot of folks are buying it and I wonder how many are being disappointed to find that out.