READY, ATTACK!(The Talk of the Town)

In this time of war, it should perhaps come as little surprise that our emerging volumes of present-day history--particularly those insider accounts of the Bush White House--have titles suggestive of supermarket thrillers. "Against All Enemies," the recent tell-all by the former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke, shares its name with three recently published pulp novels--one about a group of McVeigh-style Idaho militiamen; one about Sudanese terrorists in possession of the Ebola virus; and a third about unilateral war with a rogue South American regime. "Plan of Attack," Bob Woodward's highly anticipated account of the current Iraq conflict, hits bookstores later this month--beating to the shelves by just three weeks another "Plan of Attack," by Dale Brown.

Woodward is the author (or co-author) of a dozen nonfiction best-sellers, including "All the President's Men," "The Final Days," and "The Commanders," about the first Iraq war. Brown, a former Air Force captain, is the author of such books as "Chains of Command," "Fatal Terrain," and "Warrior Class." He may, in fact, be the more accomplished writer: his last fifteen books--so-called techno-thriller-adventure novels--have been best-sellers.

Neither man was aware of the overlap until very recently. "I heard just last week," Brown said the other day, from his home in Nevada. "My editor contacted me by e-mail and said he didn't think it was a problem, but he just wanted to let me know."

"Titles are not copyrighted," Woodward said. "In 1979 I did a book, 'The Brethren,' about the Supreme Court. And John Grisham came along and wrote a novel with the same name."

These two books actually have more than a title in common. Although Brown writes fiction, he said, "I want readers to open up a book and start reading about a conflict that they could have read about just a few minutes earlier in the newspaper." So his "Plan," like Woodward's, deals with a military engagement in the Muslim world (a Taliban warlord has taken control of oil-rich Turkmenistan . . .), and he similarly relies on well-placed sources to keep his accounts fresh. Often, this results in phone calls from officials: "How did you find out about that?" (Brown's style is heavy on weaponspeak: "Kelly's F-16 had two 370-gallon drop tanks on board, along with four aim-120 amraam radar-guided missiles, two aim-9L 'Sidewinder' heat-seeking missiles, ...