Peering inside RAND

Publishers Lunch Weekly brings word of several local book deals, the most intriguing touted as "the first inside history of the RAND Corporation," the Santa Monica think tank. To write Soldiers of Reason, Los Angeles journalist Alex Abella had unprecedented access to the archives and to RAND figures such as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleeza Rice. Harcourt bought it for the low six figures.

Others include:

Deanne Stillman's Horse Lattitudes: The Last Stand of the Wild Horse in the American West, "a narrative history of the wild horse including Custer's horse Comanche, Robert E. Lee's horse Traveler, and the fabled Great White Steed of the frontier." Stillman also investigates a massacre of 34 wild horses outside Reno, Nevada in 1998.

Bob Eubanks with Matthew Scott Hansen's It's in the Book, Bob, an autobiography of the television personality who was a popular Los Angeles radio DJ in the 1960s and who promoted the Beatles first concert at the Hollywood Bowl.

Former Hollywood assistant Robin Henley's debut novel The Assistants, "a wicked look at the lives of five miserable souls toiling in Tinseltown"