When Dick Cheney popped into the DC Borders at 18th and L streets to gather some reading material, presumably to take with him on vacation in Wyoming, he was greeted by the store’s main display, three books taking apart his administration: Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine, criticizing the administration’s war on terror; Fiasco by Thomas E. Ricks, criticizing its war in Iraq; and Conservatives Without Conscience by John Dean, criticizing just about everything the administration has done.

Cheney spent about 30 minutes browsing, focusing on the tables of new fiction and nonfiction and on the chain’s 3 for the price of 2 tables.

At the nonfiction tables, he had to search to find a friendly read. He reached past Helen Thomas’s new tome, excoriating the Bush team, and picked up David Remnick’s Reporting instead. And to focus on Larry McMurtry’s new Western, Telegraph Days, he had to snake among three different books on the administration’s failed response to Hurricane Katrina.

Despite the heavy security, many patrons remained unaware of the famous browser. Just two people introduced themselves—one worked for USA Today, and the other asked the Vice President to sign a copy of Newsweek.

What did Cheney walk out of the store with? Five books, including Collapse by Jared Diamond, Intelligence in War by John Keegan, In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick, and One Square Mile of Hell by John Wukovits, about World War II’s Battle of Tarawa.