TIMES BOOK PRIZES 1992 : Rotating the World Political Axis

Times Mirror employees are not eligible for a Los Angeles Times book prize. When they write at book length, as often enough they do, their books are routinely eliminated before they reach the judges. This year, through an oversight, that did not happen for “Flashpoints: Promise and Peril in a New World” (Alfred A. Knopf), by Times reporters Doyle McManus and Robin Wright. At the conclusion of the judging, this book was reported in as one of the four runners-up and had to be eliminated at that point.

A kind of world tour in book form with notes for an incoming secretary of state, “Flashpoints,” which grew from a series in the Times’ World Report section, impressed Marilyn Berlin Snell--senior editor at New Perspectives Quarterly and one of the three judges in the “Current Interest” category--with its combination of “in-depth analysis and up-to-the-minute reportage.”

The world defined by the vertical, East-West split of the Cold War has changed. It is now defined, if at all, by a horizontal, North-South split. Wright and McManus describe the change with a reporter’s eye for where its consequences may become acute.

Jack Miles , Director, Times Book Prizes