One more Publishers Lunch announcement I should have mentioned yesterday in my "What liberal book business?" post: Plume, a division of the big U.S./U.K. publisher Penguin Putnam, will soon bring us

Slate's line of current events-oriented paperback originals, beginning with Christopher Hitchens' A LONG SHORT WAR: THE POSTPONED LIBERATION OF IRAQ, drawn from his Fighting Words columns and amplified with significant additional material, ... in June 2003

Oh boy. I can't wait.

This will be

followed by Will Saletan's FIELD GUIDE TO THE CANDIDATES, an irreverent, no-nonsense guide "for smart readers who want to know more about the candidates than the conventional media has seen fit to print" ....

I think some people think Saletan is a liberal. Saletan calls himself a "lifestyle conservative" -- whatever the hell that means. Priggishly, when he offered tempered praise for Maryland Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the first specific issue that came to mind for him was "She's against state-promoted gambling." Feh.