Business & Economy

Investigative reporter Howard Kohn has covered stories like the Patty Hearst kidnapping and the death of Karen Silkwood. When his father's health started to fail, Kohn decided to move back to the family farm in Michigan. His new memoir, The Last Farmer, documents that experience, and considers the relationship between parents and their adult children.

MIT professor of political economy Bennett Harrison co-wrote The Great U-Turn with Barry Bluestone. The book explores how and why the United States is creating fewer full-time, well-paying jobs. He points to the deregulation of industry and the financial system as the primary culprit.

Smith is host of a popular PBS television program and author of the best-sellers The Money Game, Supermoney and Paper Money. His new book, titled The Roaring 80s, looks at the previous decade, which he says has been characterized by easy debt, easy spending and an amiable hands-off attitude by Washington. Smith says a camparison with another era of high living - the roaring 20s - is unavoidable.

Journalist Isadore Barmash joins Fresh Air to explain the process of leveraged buyouts and hostile takeovers of corporations, and how these affect employees, customers, and shareholders. His new book, Macy's for Sale, offers a case study.

The British director and screenwriter's latest movie examines the life of London's working class in the age of Margaret Thatcher.

Hernando de Soto says that the inefficient and often corrupt bureaucratic system in Peru makes starting a legal business nearly impossible for most people. As a result, a robust, informal, and technically-illegal market has emerged. De Soto explores this phenomenon -- and similar cases throughout Latin America -- in his new book, The Other Path.

TV critic David Bianculli calls the new sitcom, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Richard Lewis, has an intriguing premise and promising cast, but it follows a familiar, cookie-cutter formula, and its writing needs work.

Critic Stuart Klawans reviews the new Mike Leigh film, about working class people and their gentrifying London neighborhood. It's the director's first movie since the 1970s; Klawans says it was worth the wait.

Business writer Rosabeth Moss Kantor says the past decade's trends of rugged individualism in the workplace and excessively long hours are unsustainable. Looking ahead, she believes corporations should be leaner, foster an independent an entrepreneurial spirit in its employees, and allow for a better work-life balance.

Writer Stuart Brand joins Fresh Air to talk about the technology-focused business culture that's developing in the Bay Area. He says it's turned San Francisco into a kind of global frontier town.

Author and humorist Paul Rudnick sees shopping as a reward, a way of exploring different cultures, and an enjoyable activity in its own right. His new novel, inspired by his many shopping trips with his mother, is called I'll Take It.

Writer and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich (air-en-RIKE). Her new book, "Fear of Falling," examines the middle class in America and the many myths associated with it. Her articles and essays appear in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Ms magazine, and Mother Jones.

Business executive Max DePree. DePree turned his company, a once obscure office furniture manufacturer, into the "nation's most admired corporation" (according to Fortune magazine). DePree has just published his thoughts on enlightened management in a new book called, "Leadership Is An Art." Whereas most management books these days push an Attila the Hun approach, DePree's is closer to Saint Francis of Assisi.

Leonard Koren. He's written, "283 Useful Ideas From Japan," which lists innovative products and services in Japan. It includes such things as the two-headed public telephone, a combination sink/toilet, and capsule hotels. Koren has been an architect, graphic designer, and publisher. He works and lives in San Francisco and Tokyo. (Interview by Sedge Thomson)

Reporter Tom Rose. Rose covered the 1988 rescue of three California grey whales that were trapped in the ice off Barrow, Alaska. The plight of those whales became an international media event. Rose has now written a book about the media hype surrounding the event, called "Freeing the Whales: How the Media Created the World's Greatest Non-Event." (Published by Birch Lane Press, division of Carol Publishing Group, NY).

Investigative reporter David Burnham. His new book, "A Law Unto Itself: Power, Politics and the IRS," takes a critical look at the Internal Revenue Service, which Burnham calls "the single most powerful instrument of social control in the United States." Burnham's previous book, "The Rise of the Computer State," is about the threat to democracy posed by the collection and storage of data by government agencies.

Book critic John Leonard reviews economist John Kenneth Galbraith's first novel in 22 years.

Journalist Bryan Burrough. He co-wrote "Barbarians at the Gate," which chronicles the RJR Nabisco takeover, the largest leveraged buyout in Wall Street history. The deal was financed by Drexel Burnham Lambert, which filed this week for bankruptcy. Burrough and his co-author John Helyar covered the takeover from the beginning as reporters for the Wall Street Journal.

Consumer advocate Alice Tepper Marlin. Marlin's executive director of the Council on Economic Priorities and one of the authors of "Shopping For a Better World: A Quick and Easy Guide to Socially Responsible Supermarket Shopping." The guide helps consumers choose what items to buy, based on the environmental, social, and employment practices of the manufacturers. The guide rates more than 1800 supermarket items and 168 companies for factors such as environment, employee family benefits, ties to South Africa, and management opportunities for women.

Recently, the Managing Director of Pantheon Books, Andre Schiffrin, was forced to resign. Four senior editors at Pantheon then resigned in protest. We'll talk to publisher Roger Straus of Farrar, Straus, Giroux, and media critic and professor Todd Gitlin about the events at Pantheon and what they say about the state of the publishing industry in America today. Gitlin is a Pantheon author who drafted a petition to protest the forced resignation of Schiffrin and the events surrounding it. We will also speak with Alberto Vitale the head of Random House (the owner of Pantheon).