This week, former FBI director James Comey’s book, "A Higher Loyalty," was released. It is one of many recent so-called political tell-alls to be released. While the books, such as Hillary Clinton’s "What Happened" and Michael Wolff’s "Fire and Fury," are no doubt interesting, what is even more intriguing is their reception by the public and their overall popularity as a genre of nonfiction novel. A question that is often asked in response to the surge in popularity of these books, all of which sold remarkably well for political novels, is simply why. Why now?

Why are so many people so interested?

The first question is, perhaps, a bit easier to answer than the second. Since campaigning began for the 2016 presidential election, it has become increasingly clear just how divided the United States as a whole is. The result was the election of a man who, regardless of which allegations one chooses to believe or ignore, is viscerally disfavored by the majority of the educated and metropolitan public. Someone who, depending on who you ask, was either named to the presidency or elected by the inhabitants of the country’s rust belt and backwoods.

Those on the other side claim that he is what is necessary to improve certain aspects of their lives. The point is that the educated public of the country, and everyone abroad, are extremely curious as to how the political discourse dissolved to a point where this could happen. So saying, books written by people who actually were there as this unfolded tend to sell as a bit of insight into the event.

This explains the second question to some extent as well. There is a significant portion of the general population that was completely baffled by what has happened and continues to be with every passing day. Every poor decision leads us all to ask again: how did this happen? So, the books help to explain. By the same token, most of the content of these books support the ideas that what is currently going on behind the scenes is a complete and utter train wreck.

So, put simply, the books serve as a way to set the confirmation bias of the people reading them.

The other interesting aspect of these books is the praise that is applied to them which is usually saved for the best of the best among journalists. That is that these books are the “first draft of history.” An interesting claim, to be sure, but is it true? The trouble with the phrase is that there is no way to support it, it's just an ego booster for whoever wrote whatever is being discussed.

There is no way to know what history books of the future will contain and what they choose to omit. There are, after all, those who still see Christopher Columbus as a hero and Richard III as a murderer. But the fact that we, the public, are calling these tell-all books that highlight the hot mess of our political landscape does say a lot about us.

It seems that in large part the popularity of the books on the scale we see is, above all else, a reflection of how we see our current place in history and how we think it should be remembered. There is an old Chinese curse, often attributed to Confucius, that simply says “may you live in interesting times,” and there is no better indicator that we do live in interesting times than that we are effectively willing to read about our own current events as an interesting bit of history through these books.