Catching up with Miriam Pawel *

Miriam Pawel was the editor in charge of local coverage at the Los Angeles Times during the first couple of years that John Carroll was the paper's editor. Her reign included Pulitzer prizes but also was fairly tumultuous, and in 2004 she was reassigned as a reporter with special privileges. In January 2006 she landed a series on the United Farm Workers that the union really, really didn't like — then she promptly left the paper on a buyout to write a book on the UFW. Well, "The Union of Their Dreams" is now out. Pawel will talk about it with Larry Mantle on "Airtalk" at 11:30 a.m. on KPCC.

* Noted: Pawel has a blog for the book and posts, "One of my goals in writing "The Union of Their Dreams" was to spark a conversation about farm workers and agricultural labor, to help make farm workers visible again in a way they have not been for decades."

Also at KPCC: in honor of next month's 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Saturday's Off-Ramp ran a piece host John Rabe did for "Savvy Traveler" in 1999 retracing his parents' travels in Germany in the early 1950s.