Why didn’t Barbara Walters published her very personal memoir Audition, of which Knopf is printing 625,000 copies, before now? Because that would’ve involved revealing she has a developmentally disabled older sister, her estrangement from her nightclub impresario father, her on-and-off-again relationship with her daughter, the details of three broken marriages, numerous other romantic relationships (including that one), and the fact that when she left Today, there were no going away parties of the kind Katie Couric saw.

And also, the Times article about her today clears up the little matter of Walters exposing her 1970s relationship with Massachusetts senator Edward W. Brooke: She says she sent him a letter telling him she was going to reveal their affair, and he “he has written back a very nice note.”