Timely Timing

The events of September 11—and America's concerns with the ramifications of those events—are clearly responsible for one of the two newcomers on this week's nonfiction list. With talk of biological warfare saturating the media and sales of gas masks rising rapidly, it's hardly surprising that Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War was #8 at Amazon.com as this column went to press. According to Simon & Schuster publicity director Aileen Boyle, authors Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William Broad "are on-air almost every day, schedule permitting." The New York Times, Boyle noted, ran a feature story based on the book on September 4; "then everything else came after the attacks." A tremendous number of national TV and radio interviews have been held; print coverage has ranged from Entertainment Weekly to the Christian Science Monitor to a lead item in Liz Smith's nationally syndicated column. The authors were featured on Oprah on September 17, and another appearance was just confirmed for this Thursday. Copies in print are up to 165,000 after five trips to press.

With reporting by Dick Donahue.