Author of anti-Kerry book takes similar aim at Obama

The cover of ''The Obama Nation,'' by Jerome R. Corsi.

NEW YORK - In 2004 the conservative gadfly Jerome R. Corsi shot to the top of the best-seller lists as co-author of "Unfit for Command," the book attacking Senator John Kerry's record on a Vietnam War Swift boat that began the larger, damaging campaign against Kerry's war credentials as he sought the presidency.

Almost exactly four years after that campaign began, Corsi has released an attack book painting Senator Barack Obama as a stealth radical liberal who has tried to cover up "extensive connections to Islam" - Obama is a Christian - and questioning whether Obama's admitted experimentation with drugs during high school and college ever ceased.

Significant portions of "The Obama Nation," released by Threshold Editions, a division of Simon & Schuster that has as its chief editor Mary Matalin, the former Republican operative, have already been challenged as misleading or false in the days since it made its debut on Aug. 1.

But the book is to make its first appearance on The New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction hardcovers this Sunday - at number one. The book is pushed along by a large volume of bulk sales, intense voter interest in Obama, and an aggressive marketing campaign.