From Big Tommy's House

Add this to your summer reading list: the first female House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will release her autobiography, "Open House," around August.

As you know, it's a story that began in Baltimore at the home of her father and famous pol Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr. Hopefully she'll share some memories from her childhood that aren't already public record.

The book may even serve a larger purpose in an election year, helping the Speaker recast herself as a tough, ethnic, Inner Harbor working-class Democrat (for more, turn your dictionaries to: Mikulski, Barbara) than an effete, elitist San Francisco liberal.

Assuming this gets the kind of broad press coverage that usually comes with this kind of book, and Democrats in conservative districts might not mind being tied to Pelosi after all.