It is difficult to imagine a more unlikely trio than Barbara Spencer, David Halberstam, and Robert Reich. Spencer is quiet, shy, and wears glasses. She boasts no special knowledge of particular markets, companies, or investments. Yet Spencer just happens to be a distinguished young economist, a cofounder of a new branch of academic thinking about strategic trade policy, a woman near the top of her trade, but otherwise unknown, who has never published anything more accessible than an academic paper.

David Halberstam, on the other hand, is extremely well-known. He is among the best of a generation of fine newspaper reporters, the author of a remarkable career that has ranged from Mississippi to the Congo to Vietnam to Washington and Tokyo. For the last several years, he has been working the parallel stories of the automotive industries of the United States and Japan. Published in 1986 as The Reckoning, Halberstam's book probably will be widely compelling; certainly it will sell millions of copies, especially now that it is in paperback.

Robert Reich, of course, is a gifted controversialist, a lawyer who burst out of a junior policy position in the Carter Administration to become a leading advocate for a certain sort of government direction of industrial development. Perhaps more than any other advocate, with the possible exception of Harvard sociologist Ezra Vogel, the Cambridge lawyer is responsible for the widespread use of the phrase “industrial policy” that is at the center of today's political/economic debate. The United States has an industrial policy by default, he says; it should own up to its responsibility.