The 2004 race begins: authors (and politicians) vie for top honors.

AS THE SPRING 2004 SEASON gets under way, prepare for an onslaught of titles debating our country's merits and shortcomings in this election year. The Bush administration is under attack on many fronts, starting with its foreign policy. Political scribe Walter Russell Mead examines the uproar at home and abroad in Power, Terror, Peace, and War (Knopf); while Bush League Diplomacy (Prometheus) by Craig Eisendrath and Melvin Goodman claims that this administration is putting the entire world at risk. In The Politics of Truth (Carroll & Graf), former U.S. ambassador to Niger Joseph Wilson documents the falsification of intelligence that led to the Iraqi war; Mark Crispin Miller's Cruel and …