The world learned the first titillating details of Joe McGinniss’s Sarah Palin biography, The Rogue, on Wednesday, but should we trust them? “Although most of The Rogue is dated, petty and easily available to anyone with Internet access, Mr. McGinniss used his time in Alaska to chase caustic, unsubstantiated gossip about the Palins, often from unnamed sources like ‘one resident’ and ‘a friend,’” Janet Maslin writes in The New York Times. Usually, the book is “too busy being nasty to be lucid.” The book also includes what Maslin calls a “provocative case” for doubting that Palin may be the mother of her youngest son, Trig, but McGinniss ruins it with the “indefensibly reckless conclusion” that even if Palin did not fake motherhood, ‘it was something she was eminently capable of doing.’”