Book season is just beginning (two Clinton books next month), and Bob Shrum's memoir is being picked apart for Edwards tidbits. Shrum dismisses Edwards as "a Clinton who hadn't read the books," and says Kerry "wished that he'd never picked Edwards, that he should have gone with his gut" and chosen Dick Gephardt. As Michael Crowley sums it up on The New Republic's Website, " 'No Excuses" does tend to reinforce nagging doubts about whether Edwards is a manufactured candidate with outsized ambitions but muddy convictions."