The rise of Japan in international trade, and the concomitant slip of the United

States, had led to much Angst about America's ability to compete and many calls for renewed tariffs. Mr. Halberstam's book approaches the story by offering parallel portraits, of the Nissan and Ford automobile companies. This hour offers no fireworks, but solid exposition and penetrating insights. Mr. Halberstam: "The Japanese worker of today is really rather more like our grandparents or the great-grandparents of people in Detroit. He's someone who takes that job--and he's an immigrant, really: not someone from a foreign country, but from a very primitive peasant life--and he can compare his life as a Nissan worker with the almost feudal condition of his parents on a primitive farm: how poor they were, how little dignity they had, how much illness there was, how little food, how vulnerable they were to forces outside their control."