And then there is the appendix. You have turned the last page of Lucy Ives’s intricate, darkly funny debut, and a curious timeline appears. Have you missed a plot point or two or 10?

“Let’s Not Do That Again” is a political comedy of manners that reads like the love child of Page Six and a long episode of “Veep.”

Don’t think you can skip reading Personal History because you’ve seen the movie The Post or read All the President’s Men. Graham is perhaps best known for presiding over her newsroom during Watergate as well as her courageous decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, but the events that put her at the helm of the Washington Post are just as dramatic.