Does the Rickipedian Know How to Pick 'Em, or What?

"WARNING: THIS BOOK IS NOT MID" edition

The kids have a phrase this days, “mid,” meaning mediocre, banal, lame. The Internet tells me it “originated in cannabis culture to describe mid-grade weed that gets the job done but isn't top shelf.” I presumed it came from ye olde designation “middlebrow,” which meant unsophisticated culture, the sad sack in between “lowbrow” (which at least could have the honor of being kitsch) and “highbrow.” The books Time magazine used to publish, which live on as glossy magazine editions in supermarket checkouts now. Records that once sold on TV at midnight, in ads like this:

When a freelance writer approached me in 2019 to consider his first book for blurb consideration, I feared I’d be saddled with something a little bit mid. His book was about books written by presidents. Which sounded like dad book, suitable for airports. Because, frankly, that’s the way almost all books by politicians read, and what is there to say about that?

Boy, was I wrong. I very soon that this author was a deft storyteller, a stylist of delectable prose, a sharp political thinker, and a deep researcher (I especially loved learning all about itinerant 18th century bookstsellers) So, this is how my relationship with Craig Fehrman began, with a blurb for Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote that ran thus:

“This book is just as fun and fascinating when taking you inside the minds of presidents as into ordinary eighteenth-century bookworms. It’s witty, charming, fantastically learned, and engrossing. I loved it.”

The next chapter in our relationship came when his second book came into his hands—and you learned about that on this publication’s very first Blurbsday, on April 9, 2026, when I shared my encomium that his revisionist history of the Lewis & Clark expedition was exemplary.

Lo, that turned out to be…not a unique opinion. Craig’s first book did not make him a star, as it should have, but this one did. There was a major review essay in the New Yorker. Raves in the New York Times Book Review, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, even one on the New York Times editorial page, in an essay about linguistics.

So, join the throng, and read that book. But also, I advise you, read this one. Here’s the hardcover—

And here’s the paperback, with a different design, which is what they do when the hardcover didn’t sell the way they’d hope. A pity, that. Please, dear readers, correct it.

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