Nancy Pelosi book: The Democratic House speaker’s memoir The Art of Power omits her most intriguing talent.

As Democrats gather for their national convention in Chicago this week, all of the party’s leading lights—former presidents, ambitious senators, rising stars, and the ticket itself—will await their speaking time slots, wondering how a rousing moment could change the trajectory of the race and the course of their own careers. Pelosi has said she didn’t use a ghostwriter much, and her distinct patois—including, as she puts in the acknowledgements, “my not always understandable humor”—is on display in every sentence. She notes, for example, that the 1990s House of Representatives, “as run by Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich, was not a healthy place for children and other living things.” One favorite saying of hers that’s been making the rounds during her current media tour is stylized thusly in the book’s opening pages: “When you’re in the arena, you have to be able to take a punch, and sometimes you have to be able to throw a punch … For the Children.” But at the core of wielding power, as she describes it, is a sort of omniscience. She notes, upon their first White House meeting, that “the new president had also opted to serve everyone in attendance pigs in a blanket, which he would assure Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer were ‘kosher.’ ” She was mystified at the “rather unusual statement” that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, made to her before the meeting: “Hi, aren’t you so excited about everything that is happening? She describes, for example, a contentious 2019 phone call in which Trump “started by saying that he was ‘up here at the UN.’ ” That call was to dissuade Pelosi from launching the first impeachment inquiry, when their relationship turned from one of wary, mutual curiosity to hardened battle, where it remains today.