Revisit the making of The West Wing in Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack’s What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service. Featuring a host of newly-conducted interviews and archival anecdotes, What’s Next offers readers a glimpse behind the scenes of this beloved show. And, as you might expect, it’s a bit of a tome. Exhaustive, some might say. That thoroughness is both the book’s greatest strength and biggest weakness.

Fitzgerald and McCormack weave a tapestry exploring both the history and making of The West Wing – how it came to be greenlit, how each of the major characters was cast, deep dives into specific episodes, etc – while also shining a light on the cast’s history of political and social activism. This combination makes for an intriguing read; one-part behind-the-scenes book, one-part memoir. But there’s just so much information crammed into these 600 pages that it makes for a daunting read. And while those glimpses at the cast’s activism are insightful and often moving, they really break the flow of the book’s exploration of The West Wing’s seven-year history.

Add onto that the uneven focus Fitzgerald and McCormack give to certain aspects of The West Wing’s evolution over other ones, and the problem just compounds. For example, more than a hundred pages are spent exploring how each member of the cast ended up joining the show. In fact, nearly a third of the book focuses solely on this subject. But then the book blazes through multiple major milestones in the show, passing entirely over some fan-favorite episodes and largely ignoring some of the more difficult aspects of the show’s history. Add to that the book’s heavy tilt toward the Sorkin-led first four seasons at the expense of diving deep into the Wells-led final seasons, and you’ve got a recipe for an uneven read.

That being said, Fitzgerald and McCormack still craft an expansive, deeply loving retrospective of this beloved series. It may be exhaustive to a fault, but it’s also deeply moving and genuinely insightful. If you’re not the world’s biggest West Wing fan, there’s probably a ton of information in this book you’ve never heard before. And chapters like the one that focuses on John Spencer’s passing, allowing the cast and crew to really eulogize a man they all deeply admired, respected, and loved, is more than worth the price of admission.

Put simply, if you’re a fan of The West Wing, the book’s a must-read. It’s tailor-made for those fans. As for everyone else, it may prove a bit too dense to fully get into; a bit too “insiders baseball”. But for what it is, it’s pretty darn good.

3.5 out of 5 wands.