Business & Economy

Stock market expert B. Mark Smith. His book is called Toward Rational Exuberance: The Evolution of the Modern Stock Market. Smith is retired stock trader with nearly two decades of experience, first with CS/First Boston Corporation, where he became director, then as vice president of Goldman, Sachs & Co. He explains how the market has evolved from a primitive insiders game to a very public and important institution.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Empire Falls, the new novel by Richard Russo.

Documentary filmmakers Chris Hegedus & Jehane Noujaim. Their new film Startup.com is a Cinema Verite look at the rise and fall of an internet startup company. The film premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and is now opening in theaters. Hegedus has been making documentaries with veteran filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker for over 20 years. Their films include, The War Room, which chronicles Bill Clintons presidential campaign. Startup.com is Jehane Noujaims first feature film.

Journalist David Cay Johnston won a Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting. His beat is taxes. He writes about tax inequities, tax loopholes and the IRS for The New York Times. In a recent article (April 8, 2001), JOHNSTON wrote about the effect of the estate tax on farmers. The President contends that to help save the family farm, estate taxes should be repealed. JOHNSTON found that very few farmers pay estate tax, and he couldn't find an example of one farm that had been lost because of estate taxes.

Teenagers are the hottest consumer demographic in America. Media analyst Douglas Rushkoff examines the multi-billion dollar marketing industry aimed at teenagers in the new Frontline documentary The Merchants of Cool. (Tuesday, Feb. 27th at 10 PM). Rushkoff is also the author of Coercion: Why We Listen to What They Say (Riverhead books) about how our everyday decisions are influenced by marketers, politicians, religious leaders, and other forces.

Crittenden is a former reporter for The New York Times. Shes the author of the new book The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued. In the book, Crittenden writes about the cost to mothers when their work is unrecognized and undervalued. For instance, because child care is not counted as labor, caregivers receive no Social Security credits, and as a result they lose out on retirement income. Crittenden spent five years research on her book talking to economists, socicologists, and to mothers.

Tom Kelley is the General Manager of IDEO, a design firm that has created some of the most successful and well-often used products, such as the first Apple mouse, Polaroids I-Zone instant camera, the Palm V pilot, the Crest Neat Squeeze standup toothpaste tube, and the Oral-B soft grip kids toothbrush. The company is known for its innovation, cutting-edge design, and attention to how products are used in real-life situations. His new book is The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, Americas Leading Design Firm.

In his new book Book Business , Epstein gives his insiders take on publishing today. He also talks about how publishing has changed since he entered the business in the early 1950s. Early in his career, Epstein created Anchor Books, which is said to have helped establish the trade paperback format. Epstein was also editorial director of Random House and has edited many well-known novelists including Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, and Gore Vidal.

David Kessler is former Commissioner of the US food and Drug Administration. As such, he took on one of the country's most powerful foes: the tobacco industry. They investigated tobacco makers to determine whether nicotine was a drug, and if so, be regulated by the FDA. Kessler's book about it is A Question of Intent: A Great American Battle with a Deadly Industry.

Columnist Stanley Bing (a pseudonym) satirizes the corporate world in his columns for Fortune and Esquire Magazines. He revels his true identity in this interview. His book “Lloyd—what Happened: A Novel of Business” followed the aspirations of an executive who was climbing the corporate ladder. Bing’s newest book is “What Would Machiavelli Do? The Ends Justify the Means” (Harperbusiness) a satirical how-to book for the Machiavellian-minded in the corporate world.

Publisher Andre Schiffrin director of The New Press, and former head of Pantheon books, talks about the New York publishing world from the business side. He’s just written “The Business of Books,” (Verso) described as part memoir, part history of contemporary publishing.

Journalist Naomi Klein is the author of “No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies” (Picador USA), a look at the global reach of multinational corporations, their pervasive use of branding to sell a concept, the impact on culture and society, and the protest movement that’s resulted.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg on the phrase “thought leader.”

Linguist Geoff Nunberg on the trend among corporate giants to change their names to create a new identity.

Critic Maureen Corrigan reflects on the value of work, upon receiving a letter about her benefits from the Social Security Administration.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the language of the stock market.

Daniel Gross is a New York-based writer and columnist for Investment News and the author of “Bull Run: Wall Street, the Democrats, and the New Politics of Personal Finance” (PublicAffairs). He has worked as a reporter at the New Republic and Bloomberg Business News. Gross is the author of Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Time (Wiley, 1996).

Former mail order magnate J. Peterman. His text-heavy apparel catalogs spun stories of adventure, and earned him a place as a fictional character on the hit T-V series "Seinfeld." But his business failed, and now he's written an article in the current issue of "The Harvard Business Review" to tell what happened.

New York Times reporter Douglas Frantz and his wife, journalist Catherine Collins. They've collaborated on a new book about their two years living in Celebration, the city Disney built from scratch in Florida. Their book is "Celebration U.S.A.: Living in Disney's Brave New Town" (Henry Holt & Co.)

New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman is the author of the new book "The Lexus and The Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization." (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Friedman won two Pulitzer Prizes for his reporting in Lebanon and Israel. His 1989 book "From Beirut to Jerusalem" which was on the NYT's bestseller list for 12-months won the National Book Award for non-fiction. In January 1995, he became The Times Foreign Affairs Columnist. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Brandeis University.