C M Y K C1 DAILY 05-18-06 MD M2 C1 CMYK [ABCDE] C Thursday, May 18, 2006 Style M2 A Rule Breaker On Capitalizing Book Titles In Plot Twist, Investor Puts His Money on Individual Projects By Bob Thompson Washington Post Staff Writer Four o’clock tomorrow afternoon will find book publishing’s annual promotional schmoozefest, Book- Expo America, in full swing. Thousands of booksell- ers will swarm endless aisles of publishers’ displays at the Washington Convention Center. Publicists, agents and editors will gossip, network, fret about the Googleized future and anticipate the evening’s dis- sipations. Meanwhile, inside Room 204A, a group of (choose one) bold visionaries or deluded utopians will explain how they’re trying to change the literary landscape they think a book bazaar like BEA represents. The Literary Ventures Fund is a tiny nonprofit, founded last year with offices in Boston and New York, that “seeks to challenge the status quo of liter- ary publishing,” as its Web site boldly proclaims. LVF hopes to help exceptional works of fiction, literary nonfiction and poetry find the readership they de- serve — by using an economic model more frequently associated with Silicon Valley. “It’s a wonderful idea,” says Jonathan Karp, a veter- an editor now running the Warner Twelve imprint of Warner Books who agreed to serve on LVF’s board. “Basically they’re trying to take the idea of venture capital and apply it to literary publishing — to view See PUBLISHING, C5, Col. 1 BY NIKKI KAHN — THE WASHINGTON POST Making rounds yesterday on Capitol Hill, immigrant advocates wore blue-and-white stickers that read: “We Are America.” THE TV COLUMN Lisa de Moraes An Up-the-Hill Battle Even Without Citizenship, Immigrants Embrace a Chance to Become Activists By David Montgomery Villalva, and the Hill staffers watch Washington Post Staff Writer her, riveted. “You bring a very, very important even a.m., and she’s selling aspect to the debate,” says Amanda tamales on the Baltimore Rogers Thorpe, Ruppersberger’s NEW YORK, May 17 streets. By 10:30, she’s senior legislative assistant. “I get lliott Yamin got tossed from lobbying her congressman phone calls all the time saying, ‘De- “American Idol” Wednesday night on Capitol Hill. port them all right away!’ ” E after receiving 33.06 percent of SIs Alicia Villalva, who stole across As an undocumented worker the more than 50 million votes cast the border to make money and send with a fictional taxpayer ID number, Tuesday night by viewers. it home to Mexico, properly a con- does she get a voice? Should she, That leaves Taylor Hicks and Katharine stituent? She has been living here like hundreds of other immigrants McPhee still in the running; one of them for nearly 20 years, without a Social who walked the waxed halls of Con- copped 33.26 percent of the votes and the Security number, without citizen- gress yesterday, have a chance to other 33.68 percent, according to show ship. She has never cast a vote for petition the government? host Ryan Seacrest. Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D- “I pay taxes,” says Villalva. This But, tease that he is, Seacrest didn’t tell Md.), yet here the big man is. Alicia Villalva emotionally relates her experience as an illegal immigrant. is American. us which was which. (Smart money is on They are seated face to face in his Taylor to win.) inner sanctum. He says, “I think Villalva has just finished telling “help my dad,” whom she didn’t see Poor Elliott had to wait one solid hour where I am [on immigration] is four of his senior staffers her story, again for nine years. Now, married, “We Are America,” say the blue- to learn his fate on the live results show so where you want me to be. The words in Spanish and English, tears she has three children, who are and-white stickers on the lapels of that viewers could be subjected to Hugh fact you’re here in Washington to- spilling down her cheeks. How she Americans. the earnest petitioners in the long, Jackman and Rebecca Romijn raving day shows you’re reaching out and left home at 15 because her family “The only thing we want to do is about how much they loved the three want to tell your story.” was starving. Survived the desert to work and build the country,” says See IMMIGRANTS, C2, Col. 1 See TV COLUMN, C7, Col. 3 The Alligator Is Not a Man-Eater — Lara Logan, Unless, of Course, It’s Feeling Hungry By Ken Ringle triever. The woman grabbed a shotgun and blazed Rapid Riser Special to The Washington Post away. The alligator escaped with a flesh wound. The neighbors heard shots and called police, who Guts and Glory for CBS’s Nature, it should be pointed out, always bats promptly cited the woman for hunting without a li- last. This is true even in Florida, where, as novelist cense. Chief Foreign Correspondent Carl Hiaasen makes clear, life is more than a little To those whose closest acquaintance with alliga- surreal, and where three people were recently at- tors is a wallet or belt, this must sound like the Re- By Howard Kurtz tacked and killed by alligators in less than a week. venge of the Handbags or Wingtips Fight Back. But Washington Post Staff Writer Previously, 17 people had died from alligator at- the truth is what’s going on has more to do with an BY HELAYNE SEIDMAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST tacks in Florida since 1948. There is no record in unusual intersection of drought and gator-mating NEW YORK — The words erupt in machine-gun Lara Logan says she’s surprised by her own success: the United States of three fatal alligator attacks in season, compounded by decades of developers’ re- bursts as Lara Logan strafes the critics who say she “I’m not a performer. I don’t speak in sound bites.” one year, much less in one week in one state. populating the alligators’ Everglades habitat with and other journalists in Iraq are ignoring the signs of So something clearly is going on in Florida. Yes- condominiums and retirees in leisure suits. Alliga- progress there. vor that a more polished reporter might try to hide. terday, as if to emphasize Hiaasen’s point, an alliga- tors don’t have the brains to organize a revolution, “That’s complete nonsense,” Logan says. “I tell the But the 35-year-old Logan has no interest in tamping tor walked through the doggy door of a woman’s American commanders all the time: When we can get down the passions that drove her into journalism and house in Bradenton and went for her golden re- See GATORS, C4, Col. 1 in our cars and drive to the opening of a store and in- fueled her rapid rise to the post of CBS’s chief foreign terview people on camera without fear of being killed, correspondent. or getting everyone involved with us killed, the good- She dismisses criticism of Western journalists re- news stories will be told.” Her lilting South African voice is tinged with a fer- See LOGAN, C3, Col. 1 THE RELIABLE SOURCE BOOK DEAL Bill Clinton to write about “citizen activism” | C5 The Shoe Must Go MAGAZINES On: Bush’s Gift to Time names Richard Stengel as its top editor | C5 Chesney | C3 KIDSPOST A look at the critterati in the movie “Over the Hedge” | C12 » ART BUCHWALD, C4 · BOOK WORLD, C5 · TELEVISION, C6-7 · ASK AMY, C8 · COMICS, C9-11 · CROSSWORDS, C9-10 · BRIDGE, C10 · SU|DO|KU, C11 · KIDSPOST, C12 C M Y K C1 C5 BLACK DAILY 05-18-06 MD RE C5 BLACK The Washington Post STYLE R Thursday, May 18, 2006 C5 BOOK WORLD Bill Clinton Unfriendly Skies Lands New BURY US UPSIDE DOWN the 1968 Tet Offensive to the peace The Misty Pilots and the Secret Battle for negotiations that left so many MIA families Book Deal the Ho Chi Minh Trail dejected. It’s a fabulous read. By Rick Newman and Don Shepperd In 1972, two years after the Mistys were Presidio. 480 pp. $29.95 disbanded, their mission adopted by With Knopf better-equipped F-4 Phantom fighters, Ed Rasimus returned to Vietnam for his second By Bob Thompson PALACE COBRA tour of duty, this time flying F-4s out of Washington Post Staff Writer A Fighter Pilot in the Vietnam Air War Korat, Thailand. “Palace Cobra” picks up By Ed Rasimus where his first book, “When Thunder Bill Clinton has a new book deal, with St. Martin’s. 248 pp. $24.95 Rolled” (a memoir about flying F-105s), left a target publication date of late 2007 or off. The result may be the best comparison early 2008 — just in time to have him By Kim Ponders, of F-4 and F-105 performance and tactics out promoting his work as the 2008 a major in the U.S. Air Force reserves and former ever written, but laymen not versed in Air presidential race heats up. AWACS flier who is the author of the novel “The Art Force jargon may find themselves The former president will write not of Uncontrolled Flight” overwhelmed. about himself this time, but about “citi- In Vietnam, Rasimus makes clear, there zen activism and service,” his publisher, hat’s the difference between were no precision-guided weapons, no Alfred A. Knopf, announced yesterday. a fighter pilot and God?” night-vision goggles, none of the gadgets Knopf published Clinton’s memoir, “My “W goes the old joke.