Outside the Jacob Javits Convention Center, it was another scorching day in Manhattan. Inside, where an estimated 36,000 editors, booksellers, authors, journalists, and publicists would be commingling throughout the weekend, it was more tolerable--like a mild afternoon in the tropics. Welcome to Book Expo America, the publishing industry's annual romp, where the written word (along with an ocean of ancillary products) is the most desirable commodity on earth.


I spent three days roving the cavernous aisles, harvesting galleys, trinkets, pencils, tote bags, and at least one glass of champagne. I dodged in and out of panels, and when I could, I collared various industry bigwigs for a few moments of diagnostic chat. The first of these was Steve Wasserman, who's worn a good many hats during a long career in the trade: he ran both Hill & Wang and Times Books, then became editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and is now a literary agent. What, I asked him, was the state of the industry? And where was the good news?

Ryszard Kapuscinski, who died in January of this year at age 74, was widely regarded as one of the great journalists and literary travelers of the modern era. Born in Pinsk, Poland (now part of Belarus) in 1942, he spent many decades working for the Polish Press Agency as its sole foreign correspondent. In this capacity he covered more than two dozen revolutions and coups, and produced such reportorial classics as The Emperor, Shah of Shahs, and Imperium. His was an art of poetry and precision, and it always seemed blissfully free of ideological blinders.


Now, however, comes a potential fly in the ointment. According to an article in the Guardian (which is piggybacking in turn on this dispatch), Kapuscinski may have paid a price for his vaunted independence: "Newsweek Poland put the late writer, reckoned to be the greatest east European journalist of his generation, on the cover of this week's issue, unveiling details of his communist-era secret police file and claiming that his global travels in the 1960s and 70s were due to a bargain he struck with the communist regime to collaborate with the secret police."