Business, Economics and Finance

John Helyar's new book, “Lords of the Realm,” looks at the corporate world of baseball. Instead of tracing the history of the game through its players, Helyar focuses on the behind the scenes people-- the agents, owners, and general managers-- who shaped baseball. He's is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and co-author of the New York Times bestseller, Barbarians at the Gate.

Fred "Chico" Lager, former CEO of the Ben & Jerry's ice cream company. He joined the company in 1982, and together with Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, built the company from a small ice cream parlor to a $100 million publicly held company. Lager just wrote a book, "Ben & Jerry's: The Inside Scoop" about his experiences building a successful business while upholding the founders' original philosophy of business as a catalyst for social change.

Author John Cavanagh. Cavanagh is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. He is the co-author with Richard Barnet, of "Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations & the New World Order" (Simon & Schuster), which examines the growth of multi-national corporations. They profile five of the world's most powerful corporations, and show how they are less accountable to public authorities, are paving the way for future political conflict, and are "stimulating political and social disintegration".

James Fallows is the Washington editor of "The Atlantic Monthly." He has a new book, "Looking at the Sun," (Pantheon) to be published in February about the Asian economy. He's written a three part series of articles drawn from the book in the Atlantic (the last one appears in the Jan 94 issue).

Former president of Harvard Derek Bok. In his new book, "The Cost of Talent: How Executives and Professionals Are Paid and How It Affects America" (Free Press), BOK argues that the rich shouldn't be so much richer. He says that huge salary gaps result in social and economic losses, "jeopardiz[ing] democracy by weakening faith in the economic system". Bok was the president of Harvard University from 1971 to 1991. He has written five other books.

Peter Kinder, from Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini & Co., Inc., a firm that provides social research on U.S. Corporations to investment professionals. He's just co-written the new book, "Investing for Good: Making Money While Being Socially Responsible." (HarperBusiness).

Linguist Geoffrey Linguists considers the use of language in the business world. He says its fractured, list-based nature can be traced back to the ever ubiquitous slide presentation software, where narrative holds little sway.

Peter Schweizer, author of "Friendly Spies: How America's Allies are Using Economic Espionage to Steal our Secrets." He is a consultant for "NBC News," and has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.

Wall Street Journal correspondent Erik Larson is interested in how companies know the intimate details of our lives. His new book, The Naked Consumer, is an investigation into direct marketing techniques--how corporations collect the vast network of data they use to market their products.

Political Economist Barry Bluestone and former United Auto Workers (UAW) Vice President and Barry's father, Irving Bluestone. Irving retired from his position at the UAW and as director of its General Motors department in 1980. Barry teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts. Together, they have written "Negotiating The Future," which offers suggestions for greater collaboration between labor and management.