Critics of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by John J. Mearsheimer and Steven M. Walt (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), cannot be surprised that the attacks on the book prior to publication helped propel it as high as no. 10 on Amazon's best-seller list. Not only that, the names "Mearsheimer-Walt" have become almost People-magazine famous, odd for two mild-mannered political scientists from the University of Chicago and Harvard, respectively.

It just shows you what a little "buzz" will do - and a lot of buzz surrounds this book.

And why not? It's an important, heavily sourced and documented book (108 pages of footnotes) by two distinguished professors at two of our best universities. It deals with Middle East policymaking at a time when America's problems in that region surpass our problems anywhere else. And it is a serious book about a subject that is decidedly provocative, a much improved and expanded version of the original London Review of Books article.