From the Publisher

By Louis A. Weil III

How healthy is Mikhail Gorbachev? Who made the best career move last week? Who is more outrageous, Clayton Williams or Gus Savage? And why might James Baker go to Wyoming for more than the fishing and beautiful scenery? You can discover the answers to all these questions in our expanded, one-page Grapevine section, now running at the front of the magazine. First introduced in Nation two years ago, Grapevine offered readers an insidey look at politics in Washington and across the country. We'll still give you a behind-the-scenes look at those who govern us, but now the whole world is our stage, from Hollywood to the Pentagon, from Steinbrenner to Milken. "The purpose is to be fun and lively while still being informative," says senior editor Walter Isaacson, who will oversee the section.

The task of gathering many of the items and tracking down the accuracy of the section falls to reporter-researcher David Ellis. Known to colleagues as "Mr. Insider," Ellis has a keen ear for odd information and irreverent observation and is a storehouse of facts about the famous and infamous. He fondly recalls, for example, that Jimi Hendrix had a disastrous turn as an opening act for the Monkees in 1967. As comfortable with sports trivia as he is with political arcana, Ellis considers 1972 a noteworthy year because a New York Yankee (Rich McKinney) made four errors in one game and Archie Bunker received a vote for Vice President at the Democratic Convention in Miami Beach.

Ellis joined TIME in 1985 after writing news for a Boston radio station and working in London as an intern for The Economist magazine, where he wrote < about subjects as varied as business, science and British politics. But he says he is fascinated by off-beat items because they are "a good way to find out what motivates people in the news. Sometimes it's the overlooked fact or deed that is an important part of the mind-set of decision makers." Concurs senior writer Paul Gray, who is writing Grapevine: "While these items don't in themselves make a full TIME story, they provide information and a unique view of the news." For example, who curtly dismissed the Great Wall of China as "just a pile of bricks"? And who offered to help topple Manuel Noriega on the cheap? Turn to page 27 and find out.