There are two good reasons for an American politician to write his memoirs. The first is that he was the president of the United States...The second reason is that the politician has something to say, some notable experience or insight that he can relay from his time in office. John Kerry fits snugly into the second category—he was a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, a secretary of state and in 2004 the Democratic presidential nominee—but he seems to think that he belongs in the first. With almost 600 pages of dense text and 24 pages of color photographs, Every Day Is Extra isn’t so much a memoir as a full autobiography.

Remember boredom, sweet boredom? John Kerry’s new memoir, like its author, is reserved and idealistic and reassuringly dull, for long stretches, in its statesmanlike carriage ... Every Day Is Extra is a booster shot of old school, small-l liberal values. It is bland the way upper-class food used to be bland. It reminds you why Kerry would probably have made a very good president. It also reminds you why he lost.

John Kerry has written a solid political memoir. Every Day Is Extra offers a detailed record of an important life, a dutiful recounting of long-forgotten triumphs and setbacks, and a high-minded coda about the virtues of public service. Like others in its genre, it is long and slow, but it is frank, thoughtful and clearly written. Aspiring candidates and officials will find good career advice; wonks will appreciate the ticktocks of negotiations on Israel, Iran and climate change; cynics will see it as a trial balloon for one last run. There are a few mini-revelations, but what lingers are not the parts but the whole; not the life, but the man ... As the chapters proceed, the narrator seems increasingly a man out of time, a ghost from an age when class meant something more than money. This is Buddenbrooks via Louis Auchincloss, told by someone in the tomb where it happened ... Every Day Is Extra is a bittersweet reminder of what the country once demanded of its leaders, and what the American upper classes once aspired to supply. Today’s meritocratic elites want power without responsibility. They should have learned from people like Kerry. Some might learn from one of his St. Paul’s classmates, Robert Swan Mueller III.

John Forbes Kerry served nearly three decades in the Senate, four years as secretary of state, and did a tour of duty as a naval combat officer in Vietnam. He also landed within three points of beating George W Bush in 2004, the smallest winning margin for an incumbent president since Woodrow Wilson. Now comes Every Day is Extra, Kerry’s dense 640-page tome, his fifth book and first memoir ... Like the ex-senator himself, Every Day is Extra is informed, informative and at times overly self-indulgent. Kerry’s prose is detailed but not vivid, sounding more like a transcribed diary than a personal tell-all. Still, he provides essential accounts of his time as a truly heroic but wrongly maligned Swift boat officer, and as the secretary of state who was the prime mover of the Iran deal and the Paris climate accord.

...Let’s stipulate that John F. Kerry is up against the odds with Every Day is Extra. It weighs in at around 600 pages and is, by any measure, weighty. It has lengthy accounts of the negotiations for the Iran nuclear treaty and the Paris climate-change pact. There’s a lot about Pakistan. Also about Syria, God help us. But in truth there is much to commend Kerry’s memoir ... Kerry shows remarkable honesty, depth, even spirituality ... There are, moreover, charming moments, especially his recollections of the old Senate, with drinks always on offer, cigar smoke in the cloakroom air, raw stories on his baronial colleagues’ lips, even — hard to believe today — moderates in the Republican Party. The only thing that doesn’t ring quite true are the repeated accounts of his chummy relationship with Senator Edward M. Kennedy ... Still, Kerry displays remarkable honesty. He speaks with refreshing forthrightness about faith and friendships, including his with Senator John McCain, the former Hanoi Hilton prisoner of war: 'What John didn’t and couldn’t know then was how difficult the journey to being against the war was for so many of us,' he wrote.

It’s clear that Kerry loves politics, and he writes about Barack Obama’s meteoric rise with genuine excitement ... In the book, Kerry pulls his punches and sometimes falls back on platitudes. He never delves too deeply into himself or his colleagues. Throughout the narrative are such non-insights as Kerry’s weakness for chocolate, difficulty with goodbyes, and fondness for straight shooters. His observations about coworkers follow in the same banal vein. His reluctance to ruffle feathers perhaps stems from continued presidential ambition, although he does not write about this ... This fairly guarded, dry account of a life in service does reveal some truths about John Kerry beyond his rarefied lifestyle.

[Kerry's story] could have been a complicated tale, spiked with insight about the dilemmas of power or the challenges of legitimacy now facing America’s liberal elite. But Kerry mostly skims along the surface, offering stories of boarding school and Vietnam and the campaign trail in an even, conversational tone. Many of those stories — especially about Vietnam and Massachusetts politics — are interesting, but the whole never quite manages to be greater than the sum of its parts ... [Kerry] shies away from some knotty questions — including his decision to support the Iraq War more than three decades after denouncing Vietnam as a mistake and a national tragedy. Kerry ends up blaming George W. Bush for failing to deliver on commitments to diplomacy and multilateralism, but he reserves his greatest umbrage for the antiwar activists who split with him over Iraq ... Kerry is at his best not in wrestling with such existential difficulties but in describing the dilemmas of on-the-ground politics: how to choose a vice-presidential candidate, how to decide whether to accept public money.

John Kerry's new memoir, Every Day Is Extra, begins like Barack Obama's literary Dreams From My Father and — over the course of nearly 600 pages — slowly morphs into Hillary Clinton's paint-by-numbers political tome Hard Choices ... As the book adopts the dense feel of the typical political memoir, it avoids the genre's most newsworthy feature: score-settling and behind-the-scenes accounts from politicians who no longer need to tend to personal relationships ... Kerry, like most other Obama administration alumni who have written books, opted to focus on his time in the arena, rather than critiquing or responding to the Trump administration. But given the glaring contrasts in personality and policy, and given how much energy Trump has devoted to dismantling everything Kerry worked for, you can't help but want to hear much more from the former senator and secretary of state on current events, as well as the past.

The book charts his youth as the world-traveling son of a diplomat, followed by his enlisting in the Navy during the Vietnam War and his divisive involvement upon his return with the anti-war movement. It steers through his rise in politics to the Senate, and the close-call presidential campaign of 2004. Then more time in the Senate, and then his service as secretary of state under President Barack Obama ... Vietnam is a fascinating fissure throughout the book, one that runs from the moment he enlists to the present. But Kerry spoke of his friendship with another veteran of that war, the late Sen. John McCain, as a source of hope even in divisive times.

You don't have to be a Democrat to like John Kerry's new book. Titled Every Day Is Extra, the narrative is a bold remembrance encompassing one of the most troubled half-centuries in America ... As he tells his life story, which is largely positive, Kerry does not shrink from calling out mistakes he judges the U.S. has made in foreign entanglements and identifying the administrations and the individuals who made them ... prevailing optimism is matched by Kerry's intelligent and practical appraisal of the historical and cultural reasons—the why—behind what motivates foreign leaders and informs their decisions. Clearly, optimism and research proved valuable traits toward effective diplomacy.

Kerry’s astonishing level of recall of the resonant moments of his life both in and out of politics turns his memoir into a rich and revealing look at signature public events during the last seven decades. Gracious and dedicated, Kerry epitomizes the term statesman.

Given that such books often signal a political campaign in the offing, one wonders whether Kerry is contemplating another run for office—despite protestations to the contrary. Whatever the case, this memoir makes for fine reading for politics junkies, especially those with an interest in how policy is made ... Wonky, as befits the author, but a smart look at not just his life, but also our times.

In this fine memoir, retired politician Kerry, descended from a wealthy Boston Brahmin family on his mother’s side, details a remarkable five-decade-long career in public service: decorated Vietnam veteran, antiwar leader, lieutenant governor and five-term senator from Massachusetts, 2004 presidential candidate, and secretary of state (2013–2017) ... This book reveals a man of quiet, passionate patriotism, immense intelligence, and thoughtfulness.