The wounded, snippy tone of this New York Times review makes me want to read Ari Fleischer’s new book: After Years of Taking Heat, Spokesman Takes Potshots. (Hat tip: bj.)

“Taking Heat” takes a lot of potshots at the press (including The New York Times [Can you believe it? The nerve! —ed.]), and it reads like the very embodiment of the administration’s disciplined, corporate-style message control.

Full of excerpts from Mr. Fleischer’s often contentious exchanges with members of the press, it is essentially a collection of talking points hastily pasted together with large slatherings of the vitriol and exasperation the author seems to have accumulated during his years as a “pinata,” his word for how he sometimes felt in the White House briefing room. In short, it’s an extended exercise in Mr. Fleischer’s spinning his own earlier spin.

Some books by former White House insiders (from Donald T. Regan’s unsettling account of the Reagan White House to Ray Price’s sympathetic but revealing portrait of Richard M. Nixon) have fleshed out our understanding of individual presidents and the office they held. This sorry volume, in contrast, remains so focused on the author’s adversarial relationship with the press, and so intent on promoting a positive image of the administration, that it will only ratify White House reporters’ complaints that Mr. Fleischer was a “tight-lipped and secretive” press secretary.

Unlike Marlin Fitzwater’s engaging 1995 memoir, “Call the Briefing!,” which detailed his years as chief spokesman for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, this book does not provide any new insights into the workings of the current White House. It does not present compelling portraits of cabinet members or members of the White House supporting cast. And it does not shed new light on the president or his methods of governance.