May 11, 1986

FOUR years ago on this date, The New York Times hardcover best-seller list did not include a single biography, autobiography or memoir. Now ''Iacocca'' is enjoying its 80th week on that list. ''Yeager,'' by former test-pilot Chuck Yeager, is in its 44th week of best-selling glory. ''The Triumph of Politics,'' David A. Stockman's memoir of his years in the Reagan Administration, is the No. 1 best seller. And a seemingly endless stream of businessmen, politicians and performers are eagerly telling their innermost personal and professional secrets in print. Apparently, they are writing what the public wants to read. Today, 10 out of the 16 non-fiction best sellers are life stories or memoirs. The most recent Gallup annual report on book buying showed that the sale of autobiography and biography now runs a close second to that of reference and instruction books, the publishing industry's meat and potatoes. In what borders on understatement, Peter Osnos, a senior editor at Random House, says, ''The success record of books by celebrities who have something to say, and who say it well, seems to be very good.''

One day before a former official of the National Security Agency walked into the Soviet Embassy to make his first delivery of highly sensitive intelligence information, Federal agents intercepted a telephone call setting up the meeting, according to law-enforcement officials. But according to the officials, the tape of this conversation was not transcribed for several days, too late to warn the Federal agents watching the embassy on Jan. 15, 1980, to be on the alert for the arrival of a potential spy. That is when the Government contends that the former security agency official, Ronald W. Pelton, walked through the doors. A Tip Five Years Later It was not until late 1985, five years later, that a tip from a Soviet defector led to an investigation that enabled the Government to identify Mr. Pelton and to charge him with espionage. He has pleaded not guilty and his lawyers have moved to block the prosecution from using his admissions of spying to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

DON HUGHES watched glumly as 37 years of toil in the oil business turned to dust. The last few hands at his Hughes Drilling Company were hauling in his field equipment, stacking the huge blue-and-white steel rigs, putting away the water tables, the rat holes, the mouse holes and the dog houses. Mr. Hughes had laid off his wife the day before and this was Gaytha Phillips's last day after only four months as receptionist. Soon the gates will be locked and everything Mr. Hughes bought, including his posh office with its copper-hooded fireplace, and his Mercedes Turbo Diesel 300SD with radio telephone will belong to the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company. The suddenness of his collapse stunned even Mr. Hughes. Until two months ago, he was probably the busiest drilling contractor in the state of Oklahoma. Though oil and gas exploration had slowed since the great boom that peaked in 1982, he drilled 181 wells last year and was still hiring until recently. But when the price of oil collapsed from $27 to $13 a barrel in a matter of weeks last winter, drilling in Oklahoma nearly ceased. Now, staggering under $13 million of debt, Mr. Hughes rues the great energy boom that lifted him from smudgy roughneck to president of a company that once employed 400 people and grossed $4 million a month.

Sales of classical LP's, CD's and cassettes are booming these days, boosted by the popular acceptance of the compact disk. But while the United States counts as the leading classical-music market - making up some 40 percent of the worldwide total, by most estimates - the bulk of the profits are flowing to non-American record companies. The old days are long gone, when American recording giants like RCA and Columbia dominated classical sales, signing up the great conductors, singers, instrumentalists and orchestras to exclusive contracts. Today, Europeans control the classical record business, just as the Japanese manufacture the majority of the players on which those records are heard. American lovers of classical music have been reduced to the status of passive consumers, controlled from abroad like victims of cultural imperialism. The implications of this state of affairs have a grave potential impact on this country's musical life. When a Leonard Bernstein or a James Levine has to go to Vienna or Munich to record, or a Lynn Harrell or a Pinchas Zukerman finds his major recording opportunities in London or Paris, or when American singers like Shirley Verrett and Simon Estes must record in Milan or Rome or Berlin rather than New York, something vital has been sapped from American musical life. Because when those people are there, they're not here.

THE copper roof that will weather to a turquoise hue atop the first tower of Atlantic Center will be as distinctive a jewel in midtown Atlanta's skyline as the glistening gold-plated dome of the State Capitol is in downtown's. The 50-story postmodern structure will symbolize midtown's arrival at the apex of corporate echelons. The area was chosen by I.B.M. and its joint-venture partner, the Cadillac Fairview Corporation of Toronto, in preference to the established downtown office market and the growing North Side suburbs, where I.B.M. already has extensive operations. The 1.1 million-square-foot I.B.M. Tower is the first of four buildings in the $450 million complex to be built on 10 acres surrounding the major intersection of West Peachtree and 14th Streets. The center, which will contain a total of 2.5 million square feet of office space, is planned to be completed over five to seven years.