Photo: Brendan Smialowski / AFP/Getty
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates rang in the new year by taking a painful-sounding fall at his Washington State lakefront home on New Year’s Day, fracturing a vertebrae in his neck and winding up hospitalized overnight shortly before he’s to go on a book tour. But according to Politico, the 70-year-old former cabinet member plans to go ahead with his public appearances to promote Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, due out Jan. 14. He’ll be wearing a neck brace while doing so. Perhaps the forthcoming memoir will include anecdotes about the time in 2008 when Gates broke his shoulder but still traveled to Australia and Indonesia on official business. That seems like a story Gates should tell a lot in the next few weeks.
