the british war captain, t.e. lawrence, to offered 1 million pounds in gold. and offer which they curse he refused over dinner. t.e. lawrence, an oxford scholar and mighty sloppy uniform, was never surprised. bother with those who were skeptical of him, one of the seniors in power, who is this extraordinary pipsqueak? most people fell under his spell. he was brilliant, hard-working, he made himself the foremost expert on the turkish army, full generals paid attention to what he had to say. ..

>> the bedouin tribes were brave, but they were not trained to fight a conventional war against a modern army well equip with the artillery and airplanes as the turks were. there in the stifling heat of arabia, lawrence described it inimblly. the heat of arabia came out like a drawn sword and left us speechless.

the second son of the five sons quickly dazzled him by his knowledge of the turkish army who commanded what division and how reliable its troops were to the point where abdullah cried out, is this man to know everything? in fact, abdullah was so dazzle led, that he agreed to call his father. surprisingly, there was a telephone system -- [laughter] and obtain his father's permission for be lawrence to ride inland. to understand how extraordinary this was, you must keep in mind that mecca and the desert around us was and remains holy land forbidden to foreigners and infidels. since no one seemed to know where the arab army was or what it was doing, lawrence decided to go and find out. after a journey to a port in british hands, he rode off into the desert by night accompanied

by an arab guide and his son. he travel inside robes and head address since there was a good chance he would be murdered. after two days and nights of hard riding and blistering heat, he had -- [inaudible] the third of hussein's sons -- and met the leader he had been searching for. i felt, he wrote, at a glance that now i had found the man whom i had come to arabia to seek. he looked very slender, dressed in long silk robes and a head cloth. his eyelids were drooped, and his close black beard and colorless face were like a mask against the strange, still watchfulness of his body. his hands were crossed loosely in front of him on his dagger.

lawrence almost immediately saw that taking medina was neither possible, nor necessary. in his words, the turks' position at medina was all flanks and no front. that cutting the railway that ran from damascus to medina across l almost 800 miles of desert would effectively keep the turkish infantry busy defending their own supply line, and the arab army needed a good port to which the british could send small arms, gold and supplies and to take up ger guerrilla warfare. the port of acaba was well defended from attacks from the sea, but the turks did not think it could be defended. with the help of the formidable attack warrior who had killed at least 70 people with his own hands in desert feuds, he did

not bother to count turks. lawrence plunged off on a reconnaissance mission across the desert that took him all the way into damascus itself despite a price on his head, then brought the pick of the desert tribes down from the mountains where akaba was undefended. it made him an instant heros. he was instead made a companion of the order of the baa, an extraordinary honor for a 29-year-old junior officer, one which he shared with nelson and the duke of wellington. lawrence did not decline it, indeed, he could not. but he ignored it as he would every other honor he was awarded. he already knew about the agreement in which the british and the french had agreed to carve up the middle east between themselves and that what the arabs were fighting for, a single unified nation stretching from the mediterranean to the

persian gulf they would never get. the two years in which lawrence fought with such extraordinary bravery and skill were, therefore, agonizing to him. he felt that he was leading the arabs on false promises and hoped that by capturing damascus before the british and the french could get there they might establish an arab government and win their independence in the eyes of the world. it was this sense of guilt intensified by lawrence's personal experience when he was taken and recognized by the turks as he worked -- walked in to study the town's defenses and subjected to terrible beatings and to a gruesome gang rape that made lawrence the most poignant and unwilling of great heros, one who despised himself for having failed the arabs and very having surrendered himself to violent yule -- sexual abuse. lawrence created a new kind of warfare, one in which he deliberately avoided conventional battles and

inflicted on the enemy an endless series of what he called pinpricks in which the arabs would blow up a train or a bridge, inflict casualties and then disappear back into the desert where the turks could not follow them to regroup and attack somewhere else the next day. by these tactics a handful of men armed only with exploratives and light weapons could paralyze an army. what he did should sound familiar to us today. in describing the war in afghanistan, for instance, "the new york times" recently had this to say about our taliban opponents. they are a resill yentd -- resilient, canny ip urgency that has bled american forces through a war of small cuts. the insurgents set the war's pace, usually fighting on ground of their own choosing and then slipping away. saab -- sabotage and trickery

have been every bit as potent as weapons, mortars and suicide bombers. every word of this might have been written by or about lawrence. it is how he taught the arab army to fight, and he used it to bring a bigger and better-equipped army and to undermine a large and powerful empire. he himself described attempts to put down such a ger rell la force as, quote, like eating soup with a knife, messy and slow. and the tactics of our enemies today are exactly those which lawrence devised 94 years ago. lawrence brought the arabs victory, but he did not bring them what he had fought for, a single unitary arab state stretching from the mediterranean to the persian gulf with damascus as its capital. raised to the heights of fame by his achievements, he was at the same time crippled by his sense of failure.

he went on to try and secure the arabs' independence at the peace conference after war. he became their spokesman in britain lobbying at the very highest levels including the king and prime minister david lloyd george. eventually turning himself into a diplomat, he joined the colonial office at the personal request of winston churchill and played a major role in the creation of jordan and iraq. indeed, the frontiers of the middle east were part of lawrence's creation. he foresaw many of the problems that haunt us still in the middle east and tried to prevent them, almost succeeding in be getting the british to agree to a joint arab and zionist rule. but in the end the freed of the french for territory and of british for oil was too much for lawrence to overcome, and exhausted by the effort of writing his 400,000-word account of the arab revolt -- seven

pillars of wisdom -- and at exactly the moment he was being made famous, lawrence tried to step out of the limelight by enlisting under a false name in the ranks of the infant air force. naturally, he did not succeed. his life became a succession of failed attempts to vanish from the headlines interrupted by tremendous bursts of publicity. each book he wrote -- seven pillars, his translation of the odyssey -- made him more famous despite himself. it did him no good to turn down his decorations, to change his name, to decline the offer of a knighthood from the king or to have himself posted -- [inaudible] to escape the attention of the press. his fans followed him everywhere, and in the end he only eluded them by his death in a motorcycle accident in 1935 which was, of course, headline news throughout the world. he was 46 when he died.

in be his short lifetime he had done more than any other man to shape the future of the middle east. he had accomplished feats of heroism unequaled by anyone. he had borne the burden of self-imposed guilt and come closer than anyone has since the creation of a palestine in which both the jews and arabs might live in peace. two arab royal families, those of iraq and jordan, owed him their lands and their thrones. however, the first thing to keep in mind about lawrence is that his wartime ec ploits represent -- exploits represent only two years out of his life, that his books mattered more to him than his wartime adventures, that his friends from 1918 to his death uncolluded winston churchill, bernard shaw, robert graves, e.m. foster, nancy astor and noah coward. and throughout his short lifetime he had an extraordinary

effect on people and events. he was not merely a hero. with no effort on his part, he became the symbol for innumerable other heros whose names were not remembered who fought or who died in world war i. a painful but glamorous reminder of not only the sacrifices that have been made in that war, but of the failures that had taken place after it at the peace conference and elsewhere. the broken promises, the hasty and misjudged frontiers, the greed for oil that had led to the dismemberment of the middle east and much else besides. lawrence reminded people constantly by his work, by his fame, by his highly visible public atonement, by his very presence of what might have been achieved after the allied victory and was not. nobody understood this better than lawrence himself who wrote in a passage that might serve as the defining anthem of the lost

generation and of the work of writers like ernest hemingway in america, robert graves in england. we lived many lives in those whirling campaigns never sparing ourselves any good or evil. yet when we achieved and a new world dawned, the old men came out again and took from us our victory and remade it in the likeness of the former world they knew. these words are constantly quoting about the '20s and the '30s even by people who do not know they are from "seven pillars of wisdom." lawrence was, without having sought to become it, a glowing and sacrificial figure, the symbol for the heroism and sacrifice of the 1914-1918 war and for the failure of the countries to live up to the ideals for which that war had

been fought and for a peace treaty which plunged us into a new world war only 20 years after the old one ended. he carried that burden, the downside of his glittering celebrity, until his death. hence, his continuing fame three-quarters of a century after he died. nobody described himself better than lawrence did. he wrote, all men dream but not equally. those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was but vanity. but the dreamers of the day are dangerous then for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible. this i did. [applause] >> thank you very much. i'm sure we have many questions,

and i'd like to ask that you wait million the microphone comes to you -- wait until the microphone comes to you and to speak loudly. >> and clearly. >> and clearly. >> james stockman, thank you for -- >> could you speak a little louder? >> yes. james stockman, thank you for a wonderful talk. >> thank you. >> you seem to have quite an affinity for the underdog of whom lawrence was certainly a great historical figure. you've also written a book about a nation of underdogs, "with wings like eagles: a history of the battle of britain." and i was wondering why you chose lawrence to talk to us today as opposed to the battle of britain. >> well, i would have talked about the battle of britain if i'd been asked to. [laughter]

i, i have an unconscious affinity with the underdog. i'm not quite sure how it developed. what brought me to ulysses s. grant was that he was so clearly an underdog who succeeded but who, nevertheless, kept on feeling that he was an underdog even when he was commander in chief of all the union armies and even when he was elected twice to the presidency of the united states. there's no question that everybody thought the royal air force in 1939 was the underdog when compared to the germans although everybody was wrong about that. and it's certainly one of the attractions of the battle of britain that we are seen both we the royal air force and we as british, as having been the

underdogs who succeeded against a very powerful enemy. ike was an underdog in the sense that he certainly did not shine at west point, and late in his army career he was still a lieutenant colonel and never expected to rise higher. indeed, his highest ambition was to be promoted to the rank of colonel, and he did not think it would ever happen. lawrence is an underdog of a very special kind. he was recognized at an early age as brilliant. he was physically extraordinarily tough despite how short he was. and yet nobody looking at him or thinking about him could ever anticipate that this burned in him this -- that there burned in him this enormous desire to lead

troops to victory without any precise notion of who those troops would be. he wasn't fussy. [laughter] but to remake nations. he saw himself as a maker of nations. now, i found that fascinating. i find it most interesting that lawrence's vision of himself was so clear as a young person and remains so clear and that he was willing to make such sacrifices and endure such pain in order to bring it about. and that fate handed him, in effect, the arabs and the middle east as the place in which he would carry these things out. almost by accident. and that once it had happened it was too much for him to bear and support. the fame, the celebrity was, was

oppressive to him. because of a sense of personal guilt and a sense of personal failure. the fact is that lawrence is sort of ingrained in my dna because when with i was a child -- when i was a child, i constantly heard stories about him. my uncle, alexander korda, had bought from lawrence the filming rights. a much more readable book, in some ways. and knew lawrence in the year before lawrence's death. and they core responded frequently with each other about the film which lawrence did not want to have made while he was alive. my father, vincent korda, was going to do the art direction and scenery and costumes for it, and my uncle was going to be the directer, and leslie howard was going to play lawrence, and the

film script was prepared and written by miles allison who later went on to become a very famous english character actor and winston churchill who was then on the payroll of london films because he was in between powerful roles in the '30s. [laughter] and he needed help in supporting an ambitious and extravagant lifestyle on practically no income. [laughter] in the end, alex did not make the film, the british government was very firmly opposed to a film by showing just how monstrously cruel the turks had been throughout arabia.

to proceed in something that wasn't going to happen, converted that into sending my uncle dalton and my father into the middle east to make the four feathers. so unable to make one desert film, he switched quickly to make another desert pill m. [laughter] -- film. and it was an enormous success, and so he wasn't with at all concerned or worried by it. after the war alex liked to say that he bought books, properties, plays, short stories and so forth as a kind of investment in the future, that in his old age -- which unfortunately he never reached -- he would use them to finance his lifestyle. and so when sam spiegel e vipsed an interest in making lawrence of arabia, he had to go to alex and buy the rights to all my father's sketches, the screenplay and everything else that was associated with the

project which they settled over a quick -- well, not that quick, but over a good lunch at anna bell's. and at the end of the lunch sam asked my uncle alex if there was anything else alex would like to get out of his filing cabinets. and alex described a book he had bought the rights to recently called "african queen." [laughter] and sam said, that sounds good, i'll buy that too. [laughter] and my uncle in one of his rare misjudgments said, my poor dear sam, an old man and an old woman go down an african woman in a boat. you will go bankrupt. [laughter] as he was fond of saying and, indeed, said at the academy awards when the first nonamerican film won an academy

award which was henry the viii, he said even a hungarian can be wrong. [laughter] >> so i had -- when i was 13 or 14, i was given a priceless edition of pillars of wisdom. i grew up surrounded by people who had either known or admired lawrence. i joined the royal air force. at the age of 17 i got my first motorcycle and kept on riding motorcycles until finally a heart attack in central park -- [inaudible] margaret laid down the law and said, that's enough with the motorcycles. so without consciously saying that i emulated or followed lawrence, lawrence was really a kind of living presence the to me. and i would have felt wrong not to have written this book because i think lawrence is

largely shaped in people's minds by two different kinds of books. one which takes the view that everything that lawrence said was a lie, that everything that he did was flawed and that everything he accomplished was useless if he accomplished it, indeed, at all. the other which takes the view that lawrence was a kind of secular saint, and what's more that he sought for a kind of secular sainthood, that joining the royal air force under an assumed name was the equivalent of a med evil renouncing all secular life. none of these things are true about lawrence and i, therefore, wanted to produce a more balanced, fair appreciation of lawrence sympathetic to him because i admire him enormously. but also trying to balance out those two extreme views of him because neither one of them is true without the other. and it was a really fascinating

task not just to unravel what lawrence said about himself, almost nobody in the history of great britain has ever written more letters than lawrence. the most daunting thing for anybody writing a biography of him is the sheer quantity of lawrence letters and how good they are and how fascinating they are and how long they are and how really weird it is that he was able to write them in the moonlight leaning against a camel -- [laughter] with a pencil and army requisition forms. and there was never a moment that he was not writing. and the portrait emerges from those letters is of such an interesting man, of such a likable man, of such a tormented and tortured man that it's really extraordinarily interesting to write or to think about him at all. it's been a great pleasure and

an honor, and i have come in writing the book -- which sometimes happens to biographers -- to like him more when i had finished the book than i did when i began it. >> [inaudible] >> fascinating, that's all i can say. >> thank you. did lawrence -- edith everett. >> thank you. >> did lawrence have any special concern or affection for the arabs, or was it a question of history and geography? >> uh, lawrence had a deep, deep personal affection for the arabs. one of the things that is clearest in studying lawrence's campaigns is how bitterly he rejected the notion that the arabs could be used as an ordinary fighting army.

he resented and was very often extremely angry about any arab casualtieses. he understood that the arabs, and still to a certain degree today, that they fought as tribes and clans. therefore, the kind of mindless casualties inflicted upon the french, british and german army and the russian army in the first world war would have been unthinkable to the arabs because everyone lost was a person known to them. they did not think of themselves as an arab nation. they thought of themselves as part of a clan, the clan was part of a tribe, the tribe owed an allegiance to some larger entity. but not to an enormous entity. it was always somebody that you

knew and to whose tent you could go and to whom you could bring your problems. lawrence absolutely loved that world. he went straight to it even in his last year as an undergraduate at oxford. he spent the years from 1911 to 1914 working as an archaeologist in syria and what is now iraq. his closest friend in life was an arab donkey boy with whom lawrence had what can only be described as an intense personal relationship but almost certainly not of a sexual nature. i think if lawrence had allowed himself a release from the really savage sexual repression in which he held himself all his life, that he would have chosen his friend as the person with whom he wanted to share his life, but he also end accepted the impossibility of that from the point of view of the arabs as well as of the british.

he loved the arabs, and the story of his participation in the paris peace conference, the fact that the most memorable moment in most people's memoirs of the paris peace conference was lawrence pleading to the arabs in his robes that the con con -- counsel of ten, prime ministers and presidents -- of the chief allied nations met at paris applauded him, something which they did for nobody else. he was willing to suffer, would have been willing to die for and was passionate for the arabs, but it must never be thought that he pretended in any way to

be an arab or tried to pretend to be an raich or thought that -- an arab or thought that we could be an arab. he had the extraordinary ability to remain what he was, a short, pink-skinned blond, blue-eyed oxford englishman, and yet he was able to join into arab life to a most extraordinary degree. he had the capacity to do that. when he stopped, he almost ended it as if cut by a knife. when he left damascus in 1918 after he and faisal took damascus i and went back to england. he never intended to return to the middle east. he only went back, reluctantly, when winston churchill asked him

to, and there is a wonderful scene -- two, actually -- in what is now the west bank of jordan with winston churchill in which the arab bedouin tribes ride out of the desert, and lawrence is stand there in a gray suit and civilian shoes and a civilian hat and collar and tie, and these glamorous, exotic figures by the thousands come riding out of the desert on their camels and horses firing their rifles and pistols into the air and riding around lawrence and crying, lawrence, lawrence! is and winston churchill remarked, he could have been the emperor of the east, he had only to say the word, and can they would have followed him anywhere. there is another wonderful scene in which he and samuels and churchill were standing in front of a crowd of arabs in jerusalem who were shouting, and churchill

took them to be applauding them which is a natural thing for any politician. and he is standing there do dofg his hat to them, and they're shouting, and he finally turns to lawrence and says, what are they saying? and lawrence says, death to the jews. [laughter] what's hard to convey is lawrence's sense of humor except at the worst of events like his gang rape and beating at the hands of the turks. it's always present. one would love, i think -- i'm sure that i -- would loved to have known him.

>> william verdone. thank you very much, sir. lawrence was larger than life, and i'm curious if you might know of any monuments to him in that part of the world or, indeed, in england. >> thank you. in england we have, not only are there no lack of monuments to lawrence, we may have a surplus. he faces nelson in the crypt of st. paul's cathedral. absolutely, by the way, the right place for him. because he and nelson were about the same height -- [laughter] and they were both very slender, they were both vain and arrogant and did their very best to hide it behind a mask of humility and mod decemberty. modesty. nelson was a womanizer, and lawrence was not at all a womanize.

but -- womanizer. but his position there is perfect. however, if you go to college in oxford, you will find the famous 1919 portrait of lawrence. if you go to college, also, at oxford, you will find his robes, his gold dagger that he bought in mecca and another portrait of lawrence. in the church there is kennington's life-sized effigy of lawrence in arab robes clutching his dagger with his head on a camel's saddle carved out of marble. i think there are probably more statues and paintings to lawrence than there are to anybody else in english life except nelson. in the meddle east, no -- middle east, no. lawrence is not popular in the middle east, again, because nobody in the middle east wants to be reminded that the british had anything to do with the arab

revolt. because lawrence's exercises in self-inflicted guilt and his very strong impulse towards say do maas schism are regarded with some amazement and contempt among arabs. because on the whole they felt david lynn's film exploited the arabs on behalf of lawrence and felt it very strongly despite omar sharif's wonderful performance. so, no, in the arab world you will not find -- not only will you not find a monument to lawrence, and to be honest with you part of the arab world that lawrence is most interested in is sufficiently religious to

abhor the making of any human image. so it would be very difficult even if, even if in riyadh, which is unlikely, they wanted a statue of lawrence, you'd probably have your head cut off for making one. so, no, there is -- he is not a, he's not celebrated in the arab world as he is in ours. >> last question. >> my name is kevin mcmullen. i have a question about the arabs who were in the turkish army. if i remember correctly in the seven pillars of wisdom, lawrence talks about arabs being generals in the turkish army including on that front and how some of them were actually part of the conspiracy to establish an arab national state. one of the generals who was supposed to take over in da damascus couldn't because the turks had appointed him to be in charge of the retreat.

what role, if any, were those officers able o play in -- to play in the turkish disintegration on that front? i realize if you're a general and you want to keep your head in that situation, your not going -- you're not going to do anything obviously stupid, but there can be alternatives that one might consider that would play into the hands of the nationalist revolt. >> let me say, first of all, that the peculiarity of the ottoman empire is must substantially admire the turks for this. a relatively small group of passionately self-contained turks managed to hold together for self-centuries -- for several centuries one of the most improbable, ramshackle, poorly-deeped empires that the world has ever seen in which the only uniting bond among citizens of the ottoman empire was a

hatred for the turks. [laughter] armenians, christians, orthodox jews, zionists, arabs both shiite and sunni, hardly any of people who lived in the turkish empire wanted to be in it. and so the turks very cleverly divided and conquered people by favoring people. they even moved people into areas where they would be hated more than the turks were hated to provide everybody with an object to hate that wasn't turkish. they did that with the survivors of the armenian massacre. they killed one million, 500,000 armenians, but those who remained, they moved into places where the armenians would be hated more than the turks. and, and, yes, the arab army

had -- you have to envision the turkish army as having regiments that were, essentially, as they are, as they were in the english army, ethnic in characteristic. they didn't mix arabs and turks in the same regiment. but there there were arab regimn the turkish army. there were arab generals in the turkish army, you're right. the governor of damascus was an arab. and all of these people were one way or another in communication with other arabs about arab independence. anybody who lived in the middle east could tell, as lawrence could tell even as an undergraduate in 1911, that the whole thing was going to collapse. so it was instinctive in people to play both sides and to have a connection with both sides.

as late as 1918, feist sal was still in correspondence with general parr shah who was the turk who had charge of all the arab lands and who had killed thousands, if not tens of thousands, of arab nationalists. everybody knew the turkish empire would come to an end but whether it was through war, it remained to be seen. among the arabs there was a passionate desire not to be to be subjects in the ottoman empire. so you have to imagine that there's a level of double dealing present in the politics of the turkish empire that is almost unthinkable and can that

perhaps lawrence understood better than anybody in the world. he had himself a most politically duplicitous nature, a real ability to hide feelings and thoughts. he had a machiavellian side to him which was almost as valuable as his genius for guerrilla warfare. but, yes, arabs played very, very, very important roles in the turkish empire and always had, but always kept their options open in favor of arabic dependence when the opportunity came. >> well, just as lawrence was a living presence in your life, you made him come alive for us, so i thank you very much -- [applause] >> thank you very much for having me. >> thank you, that was wonderful. >> oh, well, thank you. thank you. >> michael korda is the former editor in chief of simon &

schuster or and author of numerous books including "journey to a revolution." find out more at harpercollins.com and search michael korda. >> we're at the national press club talking with andrew young about the new book, "walk in my shoes." can you tell us how you came up with the idea for doing this book? >> well, he came to interview me when i was mayor, and he was in second grade. and we started a friendship. i was impressed with him as a second grader, and then he's been through dartmouth and london school of economics, now he's a banker with jpmorgan. and we're 50 years apart. so it's an intergenerational dialogue. we don't agree on anything. and we say things and do things to provoke each other

intellectually. but what that does is it makes for lively kind of salty ideas. >> well, what are some of these debates that you two havesome. >> we have debates on, really, most things. i think one of our biggest debates is on the economy and why that's -- unemployment right now, how we should go about solving that. civil rights, he was a big leader in the civil rights movement. the jobs and economic front was really part and parcel of the civil rights 3450u6789. we argue should we take a more keynesian approach to solving this. we also argue about some funny thing ins like he believes, he believes in arranged marriages. i don't, actually, and in the indian tradition he says you know, kadir, i think we need to find someone for you, and i'll find someone for you, and i say thanks but no thanks. of so we argue about love, life, religion and politics. >> is there a sequel in the works? >> i don't know, you never can

tell because this we finished about a year ago, and we still talk probably every other week, and we still find something to disagree about. but the thing is that the world is a complex place, and he is traveling around now, i've traveled around for more than 100 cups in my lifetime -- countries in my lifetime, and so we're always comparing note. but our real objective is to try to understand and help him have enough vision to create the future. >> and what are you helping him do? >> i think we're trying to get this book on the kindle and get him going with technology. but more importantly, i'm trying to help him understand as best possible the financial world and why hedge funds or private equity funds can help. they're not the enemy, they're actually part of the solution,

and we need financial engineering. some people say financial engineering led to our economic crisis, i say it's a way out of the financial crisis. >> and i say both are true. [laughter] >> thank you both. >> bad engineering that led to the financial crisis. greed got out of hand. so we don't have to agree, but we're not disagreeable. >> thank you both very much. >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here online. type the author or book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search. you can also share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org.

>> up next, abraham foxman, directer of the antidefamation league, provides a critical assessment of the stereotype of of jewish people and their control of money. he speaks at an event hosted by the los angeles world affairs council. it's just over an hour. there are. >> good evening. it is the last night of hanukkah tonight. it's also, it would have been my father's birthday, and there's a lot of things that he taught me. but he would frequently say if you live long enough, you live to see or experience everything. i've always wanted to be on the

stage in hollywood. [laughter] and i finally made it. [laughter] [applause] diane, thank you for that lovely introduction. i guess that would be book four. you touched on -- there's always this dilemma when you speak about a book, and this is the third book that i've written, how much do you really tell the audience? what's that point at which you tell them too much so they won't even bother to get the book or, and yet that's what we're here about is to discuss the book. and so let me begin by trying to answer some questions which i'm frequent hi asked about the -- frequently asked about the book or any book; why write the book,

the subject? why now? and what for? and so let me try and answer those three questions, at least stimulate an interest in the hope that you will buy it. it's too late for hanukkah, but it's early enough for christmas for your friends. [laughter] i'm not sure how wonderful they will consider that gift, but give it with something else -- [laughter] it's certainly, it certainly, hopefully, will teach and enlighten, maybe even entertain. why this subject, why write about jews and money? why write about an age-oldster yo type -- age-oldold stereo ty? well, because it persists,

because it's there, because it's pernicious, because it's everywhere. and that's why we fight bigotry. that's why we fight prejudice. that's why we fight anti-semitism. and every once in a while one has to focus on a specific aspect of the prejudice. this element, this stereotype goes back several thousand years. if you examine the roots of western anti-semitism, you will find that it is one of the true basic pillars of western anti-semitism. the first being the charge of dee side, the charge that the jews, not the romans, killed jesus. that became a major repsychiatry miser -- legitimizer that enabled the teaching of contempt. that was the basic foundation

for so much of western anti-semitism. it was the foundation of the inquisition, it was the foundation of expulsions, and it made it reasonable and rational. well, the other pillar at that time was the pillar relating to who sold jesus out and why? and so the second pillar dealt with the issue of money, jews and money. jesus was not sold out by judas for theology, for philosophy, for ideology. we are told and taught. sold him out for 30 pieces of silver. and so throughout at least western civilization the elements of anti-semitism were rooted in both elements.

and it grew. and it grew and became more and more legitimate. well, so then the next question comes. so, okay, if it's there, foxman, you know, why don't you write about it 20 year ago? is why wasn't it your first book, your second book? why now? and the answer to that is what started happening in 2008. it's not really madoff, but madoff certainly added to the reason. but the primary reason was that in 2008 the world began to experience an economic crisis, an economic crisis of failures, fear for the future, people losing their jobs, homes being foreclosed. and we began to see more and more on the internet, in the

fringe media but also in mainstream media, references to jews, jewish bankers, jewish influence. and when we looked a little bit closer because we knew that certainly in europe, much less so in the united states, in europe for years -- the last time we tested it, we polled was about five years ago and then again three years ago -- that almost 40% of the european public believes that jews disproportionately have economic power, that jews disproportionately control economic institutions. so when this economic crisis started and we went out to check the pulse of attitudes, we found that 31% of europeans believe that the economic crisis was caused by jews. and here in our country where attitudes, prejudices -- we're

not immune, it's a lot better than europe -- almost one out of five americans believed that. and then came mr. madoff. and mr. madoff -- and all of a sudden people forgot, forgot that ponzi was not a jewish name. [laughter] ponzi which had been established as this concept all of a sudden now had been replaced by madoff. and we found it disturbing. if so-called jewish-owned new york times as we read that in the conspiracy view found it necessary -- for some reason we still don't know because i've had an exchange of core response. when the story broke in the new york time on the front page twice was reference to mr. madoff's jewishness and in the full story three times. and why? what importance did it have then? later it had importance because jews were victims, because

jewish charities -- but not when the story broke, not when the indictment was raised. do they write about other people's religions when someone is accused of fraud? and the answer is, no. but then it became of a special concern to us because the concept, the issue of jews and money, jewish greed, the conspiratorial view of jews hoarding money, lusting for money in order the get power, power in order to get money all of a sudden became an avalanche and the internet. in ways that we have never seen it before. and so when the madoff story began to really play every single day in palm beach where much of the handy work of mr. madoff was done, the level

of anti-semitic response that the newspaper, the palm beach post received was so huge that they were unable to manage it, and the only decision it could make was to set out an announcement that they will no longer entertain on the internet any letters relating to madoff. because the majority of the letters were anti-semitic. and only recently there's another case in florida where the miami herald in reference to a gentleman, rothstein, did exact hi the same thing -- exactly the same thing. it's part of our subculture. it's part of our subculture in this country. how often do you hear jew him down? or jewing? how many times has anybody said that's unacceptable, that's bigotry? that's stereotype that doesn't and shouldn't be? and the antidefamation league, an organization i am privileged

to head, i'd be privileged to head aipac if they asked me, diane -- [laughter] one organization at a time. [laughter] um, we receive, we receive of complaints i would say every couple of weeks somewhere whether in a middle school or sometimes at a basketball court, pennies are thrown. why? why pennies? well, you see, if you throw a penny if you want to identify and find a jew, throw a penny. only a jew will depend bend down to pick it up. and these are games being played in playgrounds, in middle school. we recently came across a couple instances of complaints in basketball games. i don't know to what extent you're familiar, but in europe certain teams have been given,

have been called jewish teams. nobody knows why. and so when the soccer teams play against each other, it's attacking the jews, it's anti-semitic. well, sometimes here, too, certain basketball teams are designated jewish. and in several instances, primarily in florida, we have witnessed in the last couple of years that pennieses were thrown. why? to distract the jewish players on the court. it's, but it goes much deeper tan that. than that. there was a candidate for president three years ago, a nice gentleman. he was the governor of a state. not alaska. [laughter] he's governor of wisconsin. and he appeared before a group of rabbis, asked their support for him as a presidential candidate, and in his opening remarks he said, you know, all my i life i spent in public

service. and only in the last few years i stepped aside from public service, i went into business, i was successful, and now i know what it feels like being jewish. there was a buzz in the room, and a rabbi approached him and whispered something in his ear, and he said, oh, i meant it as a complement. doesn't your religion teach you how to make money? now, this is not an evil person. this is not malignant. this is ignorant infected with a stereotype, and this is a person who's a governor. who sits in a cabinet room, and yet this pernicious stereotype has taken on a life of its own. and so at moments of crisis it

just plugs in and reinforces. i travel. one of the places i travel both because where i come from and because to, germans made it a cemetery of the jewish people is poland in be ian europe. and -- in eastern europe. and you can travel through eastern europe, and you can pick up souvenirs. a new kind of souvenir. i guess it's not new, i guess we've noticed it recently. it's a souvenir, and it comes in wooden, wooden-carved figures, it comes in ceramic, it comes in oil painting, it comes in water colors, it comes in all types of material and value. you can buy it for a dollar, and you can spend $500. and what it does is it is a caricature almost in germani