Joe McGinniss puts it all on the line with "The Rogue."

"Stop reading this review! Stop it I say! The only truth is my truth, everything else is a lie!"

Now you are going to read a lot of reviews about The Rogue, that will be rife with spoilers and chock full of all of the best parts, like a movie preview that contains every important scene resulting in the actual viewing of the movie to be almost anti-climatic.

This review will NOT be one of those.

But I will tell you this.  Joe McGinniss does not hold back in this book. And in fact takes a rather stunning, and potentially reputation damaging risk.

And he does it for all of you.

Perhaps its best if I start at the beginning.

When Joe came to Alaska that summer in 2010, he asked to meet me for coffee on only his second day in our fair state.  We met at the Starbucks only about five minutes from my house, where we had a rather interesting conversation.

During that talk Joe asked me to explain why I continued to pursue Babygate.

You know that is one of those conversations that I am always hesitant to engage in with people, because I am never sure how they will respond. But Joe asked, so I carefully laid out my case.

Looking back on it now I believe that Joe was just trying to figure out if I was crazy or not. (Later I learned that a number of journalists and authors had been warned to steer clear of me.) Apparently Joe determined that I was not only NOT crazy, but that my questions concerning Palin's birth story with Trig were more than valid.

However he also informed me that if I expected him to pursue that topic I needed to find him people willing to talk about it, preferably with documentation or eyewitness accounts to share.

I want you to know that I did my level best.  I made phone calls, I sent e-mails, and I even went out to Wasilla to meet some of these people face to face.

But I failed.

Even after Joe left Alaska he said "Jesse I need something more than what I found up there."  So I tried some more, and  essentially ran off people who had once claimed repeatedly to be willing to talk to "the right journalist or author."  (If freaking Joe McGinniss was not "the right author" who in the hell were they waiting to interview them?)

But as you know I kept digging.  Sadly some of my more explosive posts on the topic occurred AFTER Joe had already submitted his manuscript. And still they did not really represent what could be considered concrete proof that she had faked that pregnancy.

So when I received my copy of Joe's book I did not expect much about babygate to be addressed. (I would be proven wrong about that.)

Essentially Joe decided to write a book that is more or less two books in one.

One book is all about Sarah Palin, and her upbringing, politics, and the celebrity status that she enjoys today. The other book is about Joe's experiences as the "most hated neighbor in America."

All through the book Joe weaves back and forth between these two narratives, using the incidents that happened to him in 2010 to illustrate what makes people so afraid to speak out about the Palins, and then revisiting Sarah's life story to better understand why she and Todd react to perceived adversity the way that they do. As well as how a lack of consequences in the past reinforced their vindictive natures today.

In the hands of a less gifted writer this could have been a confusing mishmash of conflicting timelines and seemingly unrelated pieces of information, but Joe knits the two narratives together almost seamlessly.

Essentially we learn, just like we did in Geoffrey Dunn's book, that Sarah Palin uses people up like tissue paper and casts them aside with virtually NO thought to how they might be affected by her callousness. And if anybody dares to challenge her right to treat them like garbage, Todd steps in and essentially intimidates them into accepting their fate without argument.

The level of anger that has built up over the years from taking this abuse, can best be illustrated by the rather unbelievable number of guns offered to Joe while he is staying next door to the Palins. (I cannot help but wonder if at least a few of these friendly Wassilians were not harboring a secret fantasy that Joe WOULD actually feel the need to use one of these firearms and forever remove the Palin plague from their lives forever. I know that seems harsh, but I have spoken to several of their neighbors who feel a great deal of animosity toward that family, and I do not see it as being out of the realm of possibilities.)

Despite the fear that Palin seems to instill in people, Joe manages to conduct a number of "on the record" interviews, with the participants agreeing to allow Joe to use their full names in his book. These include Wasilla resident Catherine Mormile, ex-Wasilla Mayor John Stein, Rev. Howard Bess, and Palin's former Head of Security Gary Wheeler. (More on Gary later.)

As most of us would expect the book also contains a number of interviews with people who would rather NOT be named in the book. However it is a hard case to make that THEIR anonymous information is any more damaging than the information provided by those willing to stick their necks out.

Essentially the information, whether anonymous or with names firmly attached, harmoniously blends together like colors sharing the same palette, to paint a picture of Sarah Palin that is clearly defined and altogether disturbing.

In one of my favorite interviews in the book Joe manages to get one of Palin's so called "friends" to speak to him, though oddly she also demands anonymity.

This person claims to have known Sarah for fifteen years, though it appears that she has really only had minimal contact with Palin mostly consisting of attending the same aerobics class and through a "Christmas ornament exchange" that Palin stopped attending several years ago. This interviewee did not have any real conversations with Sister Sarah, and in fact barely knows the woman, but hey at least ONE person does not hate the Palin family in Wasilla! (Though this poor woman laments the fact that she never received a card from Sarah when her father died, she also insists that Joe write down that Palin always "deals with stress with grace and dignity." Poor little Zombie rat!)

Anyhow you will read more about all of that in the many reviews still to be written about "The Rogue," as well as from Joe himself during his numerous upcoming interviews this week and next. So lets' move on to the reason that you all really wanted to read MY review.

What does Joe address concerning "babygate?" As it turns out, far more than any of us could have expected.

Throughout Chapter Nineteen Joe does not actually SAY that he does not believe Palin's version of events, but through quotes from Andrew Sullivan buoyed up by the suspicions of those that know her that she pulled a fast one, he leaves little doubt that he finds the whole thing virtually impossible to swallow.

At one point Joe addresses the fact that her flight to and from Dallas was the ONLY ONE ON WHICH HER SECURITY STAFF DID NOT ACCOMPANY HER. And in case you are a little slow on the uptake as to the reason why that was the case, her Head of Security Gary Wheeler lays out what would have transpired if he HAD flown with her: "if he'd been there and her water had broken at 4:00 AM on April 17, he would have whisked her to a Dallas hospital as soon as possible, and certainly wouldn't have let her fly to Alaska twelve hours later!" Of course he wouldn't. No reasonable person who cared about the Governor's well being would.

All in all when you see Palin's version of events presented in black and white, in an actual book written by a well known and highly regarded author, it quite literally defies all logic.

I am of the opinion that if anybody who was NOT a dyed in the wool Palin-bot were to read that chapter they would throw the book down in disgust afterward and proclaim, "The bitch lied!"

Which brings me to what I perceive as the heroism of Joe McGinniss.

Joe did not HAVE to address the pregnancy issue in his book, and doing so opens him up to a barrage of attacks from the mainstream media as well as what remains of  Palin's ardent supporters.  Leaving it out would certainly not have hurt sales, considering the rather salacious tidbits that are contained within its pages, and it is doubtful that including it will result in that many more sales either

In Frank Bailey's book he made excuses for why Palin did not appear pregnant.

Nick Broomfield, though he interviewed me for over an hour on the topic, seems to have avoided it completely.

To his credit Geoffrey Dunn addresses the "Wild Ride" head on but carefully avoids slanting his coverage one way or the other.

So WHY did Joe take the risk, when so many before him had avoided it like the plague?

My opinion?  He did it for his friend Andrew Sullivan. I'd like to think he did it for me. I KNOW he did it for you. And he did it because it was the right thing to do and SOMEBODY had to do it!

And because Joe took such a risk with his reputation, with his career, and, let's face it, with the sales of his book, he has very graciously teed up this subject in such a way that it is now positioned perfectly for Fred to come in with his book, focused solely on "babygate" and the media's malpractice in not covering it, and knock it right out of the ball park.

In my opinion heroism like that needs to be rewarded, so if you have not ordered your copy of The Rogue, please do so now.  I seriously doubt that you will be disappointed.