The former first lady’s new book is one for the books. For other books, that is. An unremarkable reference volume that more-serious authors will feel obliged to reference when writing more-serious books about President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s unremarkable tenure. View from the East Wing adds up to something less than the sum of its many terrifically banal anecdotes. It adds down. Contrary to memory, the memoirist insists that this halcyon presidency was bedeviled by unknowable unknowns, all of which turn out to be things that most people mostly knew.

The East Wing as we’ve known it since the 1950s no ...

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