Never assume you know more than the guy in the camouflage tux

I've often said that I can indeed judge a book by its cover.

(And anyway, the premise is that one can't accurately judge a book by the cover, not that one can't do it.)

But usually, I can do it. Accurately.

However, I was wrong on my first instincts about "Why my wife thinks I'm an idiot," the new book by ESPN's Mike Greenberg. He's a SportsCenter anchor and hosts a morning show on ESPN Radio, and I figured the book was an attempt to make a quick buck by writing 200 pages of name-dropping drivel.

But Greenberg himself isn't your average airhead jock anchor. For one thing, he seems more interested in fashion than sports. (What other ESPN personality would mention off-hand, as Greenberg does on page 93, that he is wearing a "black cashmere Loro Piana blazer, a silver Prada dress shirt, untucked, and brown suede Gucci boots"?)

The book is No. 14 this week on the New York Times Bestseller List. And that's because it's not about sports.

It's an introspection by a Medill-educated man trying to figure out women, especially what to do when his wife says she is fat and hates her clothes. It's a lesson on how to tell the difference between identical-looking Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahnik black strappy sandals. It's a humor book by a great story-teller. And it's a probing look into who it was that came up with the idea of placing tiny pins inside dress shirts, despite the fact that the shirt is already neatly folded and tightly packaged in cellophane.