From the Publisher

By Elizabeth P. Valk

Let's come right out and admit it. Among TIME's 26 bureaus around the world, some postings are considered more desirable than others, and Rome is right atop the list. Apart from the allure of the Eternal City itself, Cathy Booth's four years there featured a string of challenging assignments. She covered the papacy and the World Cup soccer matches, rushed to the Iraqi border to interview refugees when the gulf war broke out, and risked shellfire during a hydroplane foray into Lebanon. So at first, she admits, it "didn't exactly seem like a reward" when, 17 months ago, she was named Miami bureau chief.

Miami has indeed proved to be a trial for Booth. Actually, two trials: the sensational rape proceeding against William Kennedy Smith, which produced TIME's "Date Rape" cover story, and the drug case starring fallen Panama strongman Manuel Noriega. She is thinking of more than climate when she boasts, "Miami is the hottest assignment around." Outside the courtrooms, Booth reported a cover story on Orlando and finagled 1992's great correspondent coup, a Business lead story on the booming cruise industry. Naturally, duty required Cathy to sample a Bahamas cruise. The bureau also covers the Caribbean, and she has reported from troubled Haiti and Castro's crumbling Cuba.

Cathy came to us in 1985 from United Press International and reported in New York before moving to Rome. Perhaps the overseas experience did it, but what , she likes best about Miami is the exotic, not-quite-America feel of the place. Is this the South Florida portrayed in TIME's grim "Paradise Lost?" cover story of 1981? Booth reports that guns and drugs remain big local businesses but that "Miami is no longer the nation's murder capital, or even its money- laundering capital. Miami Beach is a symbol of change. These days they're shooting models ((with cameras)), not criminals, in trendy neighborhoods of South Beach." The renovated Art Deco hotels are populated by European tourists, she says. Some of them are from glamorous Rome.