There was for many years a photo on a hallway wall of our family home: an aged woman avidly reading in a canopied four-poster bed. The caption was a line from Henry David Thoreau: “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election (Public Affairs), by Devlin Barrett, arrived Monday last week, a day ahead of schedule. I read the first twenty pages standing up. I sat down and resumed reading, finishing the 325-page book the next day. As…