that kid had a mother and sister or whatever and i started to cry and i started to ball. i started crying so hard that my ribs ached. i couldn't stop for three days. literally three days i couldn't stop crying. i go to work and have to suck it up. folks start to talk to me had to leave and go outside and walk around. i managed to shove that down again and deal with this. i got five kids to raise. everything is cool again. 1990 i am driving down i 5 at 2:00 in the morning and this is a wonderful -- you are all by yourself, the dashboard in front of you and country music, radio and no one can touch you at your doing something and it is time -- two eyes appeared on the windshield in front of me.

wan he discusses his book in history of the nobel peace prize. in at the "national review" senior editor presents the many recipients of all of the world's best known prestigious awards. we shall the spotlight, alfred nobel prize founder and also discuss many note for the activists of leaders who were overlooked for the price. he talks with wall street journal international amateur matt murphy. >> host: it's good to see you. >> guest: you too. thank you triet >> host: why this book about the peace prize? >> guest: i thought it was a good idea to i hope it is. it's an interesting subject i find, quite apart from my book its quality. it is an interesting subject, and i think an author can only

mess it up. it gives you -- it gives you an overview of 20th century because the price like the other nobel prizes begins a 1901 so you go through the first four of the depression, the second of war, cold war, the arab-israeli conflict, the war on terror, obama, almost everything. it has its finger in many pots then you have a pot of characters all of these laureates and people all interestingly as i found some people said to me as i was writing the book and the book was lengthening concentrate on the interesting ones and skip over the less interesting ones that they are all interesting or at least i found. then the book or the subject makes you confront some of the biggest questions concerning war and peace and freedom and

tyranny and makes you decide what to consider nearest true so i founded a rewarding exercise to study the peace prize. it's a juicy subject. >> host: in some ways when you add up all of them the peace prize is usually controversial in a given year because somebody is very unhappy about it but overtime to confront something to like or hate about it. every nobel peace prize selection pleases some one. was there barack obama winning saying what is this about or any moment something clicked the use of light like to look more deeply at this? >> i decided to write a history before obama had one actually to read this was first in 2002.

in 2009i return to it and have to be reminded of the incumbent president is a nobel peace laureate. >> i want to talk about some of the recent events but we should start by telling a little about what you heard by alfred nobel and with the original vision for the peace prize was and how it came to being. >> i don't know if you found the same, and i enjoyed reading about his life and sketching his life. >> host: with a lot of different interests and activities in energy and enthusiasm. >> guest: with a talent to refuse a brilliant engineer and a chemist.

he was a brilliant of entrepreneur and managed an empire of like mind factories and facilities. victor hugo called them of the wealthiest vagabond. he traveled all the time managing these things corresponding. a must've been one of the most correspondents of his age he wrote thousands of letters a year and in five or six or seven times he wrote a ton of recipients. he was a brilliant guy and i remember reading his letters, a complicated man sometimes a sunny idealist an optimist and sometimes a dark senate. about 355 patents the most famous invention is dynamite but we are told by people that know dynamite is not his most significant invention and there

is a myths to be established over guilt in his convention of dynamite and i think i say in my book it's hard to know eight stockley what is in his head and heart but seems not to be true. he was proud of his achievements in the explosives. they've built what we would call to the infrastructure tunnels and railroads in this country in fact. he was also a great believer as you recall from the book and the power of the terms, the ability terrible weapons to deter the of war and perhaps eliminate. he was an over believer and if he had seen little of the 20th century especially the first war his views would have been different. he dies and i think 1896 and rights his will one of the most famous ever written in 1895

heels five prices. if you want me to shut up for a while i will. i've been model logging. >> host: no camano comegys an interesting figure in your book wrestles a lot on his vision for the peace prize and how well the vision is or isn't served. >> guest: i find, and america would think this, the well is like a u.s. constitution. they interpreted with strict instructions and there are people that are really loose about it to live in the documents to the vessel we fill with our own thoughts and times and so on so it has often been ignored. but he establishes the prizes. in his order they are physics, i always got to start to the custard the chemistry. physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine as he puts it,

literature and peace and what is missing is economics. it's not a real prize, it is an add-on established by the symbol bank of sweden and its formal name i think is something like the central bank of sweden in the memory of alfred nobel. they're happy not to correct us but it's not a nobel prize. he has the five prizes and he wants it to be given principally for those that figure the cause of fraternity deformations and that is the phrase in the world regarding the peace prize. fraternity between nations and he wants them to be awarded for work done during proceeding years. this was a surprise i always thought the prices were kind of a cumulative awards lifetime achievement awards were golden handshakes at the end of an illustrious career.

>> host: i didn't do the math, but i could probably no more than ten or a dozen of the winners you write about probably fulfills the specific criteria triet >> guest: you're right. one could account. i did not but i think that's true. >> host: very quickly there is another element you should talk about which is there's kind of a norwegian miffed at the heart of the peace prize and the time the peace prize was created. can you talk about that a little bit? there's a special quality in the peace prize. >> he has his life crisis and gives four of them to the swedish bodies to administer. he did most of his growing up in st. petersburg, recalls michael lowden perlo but he was swedish and a very much universal man if

he gives the fifth to norway and asks the parliament to elect a committee of five to administer the peace prize. he doesn't say that the committee members must be norwegian and there's a debate about this in the beginning in 1900, 1901 you could have a panel on the international panel arguments on either side but it's been an all norwegian penalty and some of my friends don't like when i say this but fighting one could say they would like to see legislature to let the committee therefore the nobel peace prize in sayre collection of the people in their culture. >> its democratic manly, isn't it? there are strong the social democratic collectivist

countries and which the fis is social solidarity jury important they are not commies treated the maybe a little pink by american standards. there is one party and norway called the progress party. >> emerges between norway has a small country coming and it was a life with sweden for a long time. what comes across is a funny cosmopolitan aspect and at the same time a kind of northern. >> was a fishing village before or real. this will be shown in norway. [laughter] believe it or not, you know this

house some people may snicker at this but in the 19th century and beginning of the 20 if there was a power come substantially significant and norway was not. so norway would be disinterested and pure above all without the geopolitical interest objective and an arbitrary of mankind and like other nations eight adores the organization's and places great emphasis on the u.n. as it did to the league of nations and have the parliamentary union organization. host could crop up like the red cross which has three or four nobels. >> guest: street. >> host: they come back particularly in the wartime and certain moments if you have a

soft spot on the borders in 1999. this is another in polite thing. international organizations are a way for a very little power less country to be somebody. also they are very key to check american power and they and others regarding international decisions on american policy. host could you think it is in the dominant power for quite some time? estimate certainly since world war ii. >> you went into this thinking some things about the nobel peace prize as i suppose we all do. we all have opinions and like to be debated but as you reported some of what he thought turn out to be true and some of what

you're may have challenged the conceptions of can you talk about what surprised you in the peace prize and where you had a conception that turned out to be true. >> many of the laureates i didn't know and i enjoyed getting to know them named albert john. he was a chief and a dedicated christian and a great man, strong man i very much enjoyed getting to know him. he was with nelson and blundell i very much enjoyed many others including the german pacifist,

quidde. some of them are quite sensible and even brave, and in my time and our time the word pacifist has been a bit of a slur. if you call someone a pacifist you may as well object. certainly before world war ii and before world war i if you said to someone you are a pacifist they might say to you of course i am were you come in interest? it was posed against know what to do some -- against militarism. they were wrong they were not monolithic. they had different views and took different actions. i found peace a jury slippery concept. i have an essay on the peace in the concept and an elusive concept of what is peace after all. we know it is in the option of

the war. is war the worst thing in the world? probably not but it's a nasty, horrible murder listing to be avoided. utter comes the time to stand and fight. these are all tricky questions and i guess i found is the nobel peace prize altogether or a mixed bag. a few of the prizes that are clearly good or bad i think most of the time the committee had a case, a bit of a case even the arafat. a lot of people said the mine was writing the book telling them what i'm doing, writing a history of the nobel peace prize and they would trinkle their face and say -- for them that's the end of the story. what more do you need to know? and there was a committee member that resigned after that committee and i would have been with them i think.

but it is well to remember he didn't win a prize alone in 1994. he won it in concert with the governor's top statesman of the prime minister, and the two of them were happy to appear in oslo to accept the prize or willing to do so in the foreign minister went out of his way but the prize was, quote, sitting. >> host: it's an interesting one in your book because what i saw throughout is that you were taking seriously the winners, reading the speeches, listening to their words, trying to see their views, and then along the way you mentioned the pacifist you're pretty open-minded about the discoveries about people even if you disagreed with them and one of the things you've alluded to in the wrestling is peace and what does it need you

for almost beginning to start with alford nobel. what jumps out is this interesting ongoing discussion and debate on the committee there are years where they come out and talk to redican date you think they got it wrong and the next year to give a stirring speech and address. >> that's right. in my view some of them turn lousy after they went in that activism but they were not awarded for that. take lionel calling. a fellow traveler, a great supporter of the soviet union an apologist of the soviet union. he won not just the nobel peace prize with allin in peace prize that began and he said it meant more than the price at the

norwegians but he first won the chemistry prize for his of efficacy of the nuclear test found. is that prize ignominious? his political life was. maybe not so much. >> i want to talk about some of the nobel winners and i want to talk about something the you started to speak about which was the notion of peace and the bustling with a that. how do you see the concept in terms of you have an essay where you talk about peace and is a slippery concept and they move beyond the boundaries of alfred nobel. did you come out of the experience of this thinking that that was good or do you think that there is a certain different guidelines were we to think about peace.

there's a political piece or national peace or world peace, this individual peace or spiritual peace. they call themselves the freedom loving nations. the soviets in their space stations piece as well as world to the party and the state and the kind of peace stability not our kind of peace we think more about peace with freedom. it can be boiled down to bumper

sticker language. better read than dead. have the license plates say live free or die. how many are willing to follow that? are we all brave hearts? we need to stand and fight. these are all tough questions. i'm very aware people talk about peace. we have that phrase with jeremiah. you may remember that criticism that tony blair made he was going off to do some diplomacy in the arab-israeli conflict and he said to george w. bush if i win the nobel peace prize they will know why failed. i don't think he turned it down. if someone like me coming and i

am greek and conservative and some like me can listen to what macarthur called in the letter peace cranks, it is just a joke but real peace isn't. it's in riverside park over here if i have my bearings and by what right now and then. they killed over 600,000 people in america and the population was in that large of the time. the war is necessary and just every now and then. there is nothing like true peace. i quote in my book i love this land from oral and his novel coming up from air.

and though war when there was peace there was some are all around. if you can get peace you've really gotten something but the question is you talk about peace but who's? bulgarians, the piece of the grief? these are tough questions. >> host: let's talk about some of the winners and gives us a chance to reflect on some of them. i pulled out some of the ones that struck the -- >> guest: who do you like and it enjoy getting to know if i may ask? >> host: one of the ones i wanted to ask you about was correlate think 1945. the journey, i believe if i am not mistaken a decade in which a couple of tv a couple of them were skipped. we should mention this become

much more common in recent years and there were many decades in which one or two or three years the were skipped. >> guest: now comes every year like christmas. >> host: for somebody any way. but he stood out as a very compelling figure and -- >> guest: one of the bravest men in his time. >> host: did you know about him before you started research on the book? >> guest: only vaguely. he was a german journalist and pacifist. he was jailed even before the rise of the nazis for criticizing the german rearmament, for german violations of the versailles treaty but he was free walking around with the nazis and elected to power and they arrest them after the power and put him into a concentration camp, they

renounced the principles and refuse to those. the torture them to death. there's a campaign by a german nobel laureate to get peace prize. they wanted him to have the peace prize for a few reasons. they wanted to honor the other germany, the better germany and they did to him the peace prize for 1935. they gave him better quarters but he died in 1938 and it was a decision of the nobel committee because germany was threatening the norwegian government for

norway to stay mitchell and the first world war and they stayed neutral. sweden was very cross with of the norwegians for doing this because the vote, too and after the apprised the government for the germans to accept any price in any field and they created their own as a substitute nobel for the other asian. >> host: the first of three times because the soviets did and the chinese just started doing it since 2010. >> guest: you are right. >> host: he stood out because in some senses in being a brief individual himself, this election as you say at the time

in europe to name somebody it's interesting because if you have a couple years later on the committee about neville chamberlain who didn't get the debate there'd been a 39 prize which there wasn't. not since september 31st on the second week come second friday of october the prize was kind of suspended during the war mevel chamberlain would have received. if you are going to nominate a signatory you might as well nominee to the german -- the nomination was withdrawn but chamberlain might have received. >> host: let me go back a little further to my think the first controversial pick the was teddy roosevelt.

>> guest: there's still upset about that. >> host: it's interesting because it does happen that somebody like tiahrt that is more militaristic and his personality pops up. tell me about his nobel. >> guest: . the prize for peace was given in "the new york times" to read he had mediated a truce in the japanese war, 1905 led to the portsmouth treaty in september of 1905 and he was a friend of the arbitration movement.

those that wanted issues to be settled not by war but the new national court. he was friendly to this causes but was a strong believer in deterrence and in his memoir he wrote the best thing he did was to send the u.s. battle fleet around the globe. that didn't sit with some people but his lecture he gives after his presidency on the grand world tour is majestic and true is one of the best meditations on peace five ever read frankly. what a writer he was. >> host: he was a historian from his earliest days. >> guest: he wrestles with what we were talking about, what is peace after all and he says let it not be an excuse for tierney. >> host: he is also as you said the first peace through

strength figure in nobel history general marshall in a 53. >> host: another one you said was extremely popular and there wasn't much to date about that also it was an interesting speech, too. >> guest: you and i think that the great contribution to peace he ran for the marshall plan she was the only one not to call what he called it by the european recovery program that is what he was four. the same day winston churchill was offered the prize but marshall gives the most unusual lecture probably the nobel lecture least like. he says disarmament and demobilization and

demilitarization have been disastrous for the country and other democracies. we were back on our heels before world war ii and again unprepared for korea. soldiers like me like to clean up after people like you because we were not properly defended. we were naked and to our enemies and so that is the kind of thing we're used to hearing in oslo and its controversial because after all he gives you three thought full common sense speech. >> host: he was also a proper figure. >> guest: when i say controversial i mean by the classis, controversial prize on

the left among academics people revere george marshall who said in reconstructive europe he did something herbert hoover did after. he was heavily nominated for the peace prize but never won at. >> host: 1958 figure if it was prominent then is ralph bunche that stood out at the time of two very well remembered today but another interesting figure. can you talk about it in the book? >> guest: i remember being to the committee on a postage stamp and i was glad to see that. he was one of the most impressive men we have known it yet he was born in 1904. born in detroit makes his way to

his grandmother. the parents are gone and he went to a white high school in a los angeles he's a sports star and a valedictorian, sports story and all the treen of ucla we're talking about a young black american 19 teens and twenties. the black women of l.a. reza thousand dollars of cash for him to put in the pockets as he goes across the country to harvard. he is the first black person to earned a ph.d. in political science and a master's from harvard as well. he has a flirtation with a left that rejects him and he becomes a u.n. diplomat, a and presides over negotiations between israel

and its arab attackers in 1948 and 49. there was a nobel peace prize in 1950. the committee is very keen on learning the new united nations giving it a boost and saying the u.n. should be of the disputes coming and he was the first non-white recipient to the nobel peace prize for those keeping score. >> host: he jumps out from the pages of the book a little bit and there were several figures like this has the one who was prominent but not free well remembered today reflecting on him of that which is one of the great things of the book. >> guest: made mistakes but a smart cookie and all-american. >> host: you talk about this one more controversial -- can

you talk about that? >> guest: in january 1973, kissinger, the security adviser and the north vietnamese emissaries' sign the agreement that's supposed to be a truce to the war and the immediately violate. the committee gives the prize and he's now the secretary of state in the fall of 1973. i think kissinger was a little embarrassed. >> host: >> guest: it made relations with president nixon on the nobel peace prize he works so hard for peace with honor and as he called it in the united states and north vietnam.

kissinger gets it and refuses the prize with an insult. kissinger doesn't go to collect it and in 1975 when saigon falls and the treaty is nothing come he tries to return the price, the metal, the diplomat added the money at the norwegians tell them the nobel peace prizes and returnable you've earned it for what you've done then. this isn't contingent on future success. kissinger says he would have rather won the prize for diplomacy and the middle east peace and else i recall he wins the nobel peace prize in 1986 and telegrams. >> host: telegram or fax.

>> guest: i wasn't proud of leal employees but i am proud of yours. >> host: it created an uproar. >> guest: he says it ceases to be possible and obsolete when kissinger won the nobel peace prize. i think it is more shocking that the totalitarian dictatorship won the nobel peace prize for the program is attached to the american secretary of state and i regard that as a bit weird. >> host: what is interesting about, too, in the 1 cents a distensible because it is more to the parameters leave out that many have yet in the preceding year and at a time when after years in which vietnam have roiled the world and relations and there was hope of relief, but of course as you also want to play now just a few years

later after the fall of saigon, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are dying in vietnam. it goes through a different piece where there's a unified vietnam but it isn't a peaceful situation that all. almost everything he could see something in that. >> guest: i was impressed by the diplomat that says i was in college and he said for 12 years in vietnam bombs rained on every city, town, village in south vietnam and no one budged. it took the coming of the peace if you will, the wrong kind of peace to send 600 or 700,000 out into the china sea. it might risk drowning and it

took peace to do that and i'll remember that concentrated my mind when i heard that. what kind of peace is that? >> host: one of the interesting things the price because of the reflections and thoughts about peace and what we think of peace in overtime in some cases it was argued about i think. the 70 was a busy time and one is in 75 which stunning come a great act to talk about adel but triet >> guest: the soviet russian whatever you prefer the great

physicist who threw away his career at the top of the scientific heat to speak up for human rights and freedom and dignity and the committee gives him the prize in 1975. soviet communism lasted was from 1917 to 1991 and there's a great many heroes in this period, dissidence, political prisoners of conscience, activists of different kinds and all over the communist world, the soviet bloc certainly come and there are only two were given by the norwegians to people in the soviet cause you might say. those are the only to. there are three anti-apartheid,

but the award was very important and have an effect. >> host: it's interesting because it stands out as one of the shining prices and reflects the context of the discussion in a different view of what we mean by piece for some of the anti-apartheid that he mentioned the mardy essentially not specifically to feed it to the fraternity between nations. they are within a nations and recognizing prisoners of conscience as the term for want of a better one simply for their moral stance and forcefulness and view which has become a peace prize but it's different than the nobel originally might have received it. >> guest: i wonder what he

would have thought. i ask what the piece price should be. i think the committee should follow the will that rules of the best prices. he told me in an interview that without the prior is his solidarity could never have succeeded. the way he put it is there was no wind blowing in the sales and after he won the peace process there was wind. >> host: they are fully aware of that when they sit down to vote in oslo the peace prize the person can impact events. >> guest: it can be within in fact i learned something from a book robert wrote about nicaragua called the twilight struggle. the kennedy gives 1987 the peace prize to the president of costa rica and they tell them privately we are giving you this

award to use as a weapon against ronald reagan because they were in disagreement about central america, and he told him reagan is responsible for my prize. this can be an on board with power. some people think that it gave the freedom and independence. it's well known to use the mccray is propelled her to a global presence that still 21 years later as mine are seems to be opening that she is benefiting from. >> guest: she was famous before and after, the same as the dalai lama who receives the nobel peace prize in '89 what is done for to that?

people know that dalai lama personally and the nobel peace prize has helped my sure. most of it's got under the skin of the chinese to see that. we could talk for hours, but i want to go a little bit to the last decade because interestingly, -- some of the most controversial nobel's committee and to raise has to be limited to, the definition of peace changes again over the years thinking of our core's prize in particular. talk about the last decade worth of nobel because you spend a lot of time on them and we can take barack obama to talk about the bush years. >> guest: what do we have come 2001 right after 9/11 the prize

goes to the united nations and the secretary-general. as you know it is the centennial of the nobel peace prize 1901 to 2001 and it wasn't for the nobel committee to honor the u.n. but they were also saying they were admonishing what terror would have on don't go alone everything must go through the u.n.. there was a message at the peace prize command and the chairman -- >> host: you know that -- >> guest: he was explicit in his presentation speech in the ceremony, yes. he was very explicit the next year when the prize goes to jimmy carter and when the president announces it she says this price is intended not just as a personal award but as has taken a leg to the american administration and all that followed that line and taking the lake is an expression that

we learned to say slap in the face or poke in the high, so those carter. in 2003i think the human rights. in 2004 with a kenyan environmentalist. 2005 -- >> host: let's stop on 2004 and go back to al gore. environmental, the first environmentalist. controversial little bit in the sense that bring environmentalism and the concept of peace is controversial for some people anymore. >> guest: that's right. environmentalism is on the rise. i was also honored. i don't believe -- the mobile chairman said this was meant to honor the women of africa as well but it was interesting features. she was a political dissident. a woman formidable, a woman of

talent coming and she came to the united states to study in the same program as barack obama senior from kenya. that's right. to have another clause by environmental nobels. for example the great economist and there's a 1949 award to the first leader the fao. mabey to towson for was the first green contemporary award. 05, the atomic energy agency and then director mohammed. people wondered is the seventh circuit in the leg? it was. it seems pretty clear. 2006, mohammed yunis, the microlinder. how does this work on the nobel

peace prize? >> host: president clinton lobbied for him the very hard and he had a lot of institutional support. >> guest: he was always advocating the peace process and i think the trend delete the germans as bill clinton can get off our back. by the way, he's one of the few top democrats these cues want to be a nobel peace laureate. carter, gore and obama. i'm trying to think if a witness had won the peace prize. i don't think so. i have to go back. she won the two scientific prizes. >> host: i can't remember who juan in the 50's i think. the wife of one of the early --

>> guest: are we thinking of one of the first economic crisis? >> host: i sort of remember the name. >> guest: that's right. they worked on the american dilemma project. >> host: that's the one to al gore because that is one of the most controversial. >> guest: a piece of trivia the subtitle of my book is the history of the world's most famously controversial price and i think clearly it is the most controversial prize but this is the same and the most famous that me be a bit of a fudge because it could be tied with or surpassed by the oscar. i don't care how you would measure this on the basis but i think it is probably tied and one man in one year in 2007 wins

both of the awards and it's al gore. the amazing thing you will never happen again and i say that if we are going to lose the presidency in such a hard way it's some compensation to argue the two most famous in a single year and he says essentially in this election the nobel peace prize comes as a kind of bomb following that episode in 2000. but yes the global warming campaign was at its apogee in 2007 and looked less deutsch after and i think they might have been lucky to win and win if they did in 2007. when you look at these in the last decades we will talk about president obama in just a minute, but you think that there has been a shift in how they think of the peace prize in oslo versus the first 100 years or

are some of these in the tradition of the prize going back and forth? >> guest: there is a solution. i think that the committee is subject to a certain trendiness and is vulnerable to fashion what is hot now and cooled now and it's very cool, no joke intended, in 2007, and the 2008 award is more and given to the u.n. diplomat some people have said the committee should be aware of the celebrities elections there's been a number of celebrities in oslo but obama may be the biggest. there are many thais to peace so it's given to diplomats and is given to the humanitarian scum and mother teresa, microlenders,

campaigners, arafat, a different piece, and they almost always have the case the global warming awards and the intergovernmental panel on climate change that award for the peace prize is a departure from the well and not sure it is a defense bill but it's their award to determine the award and the rest of us are just spectators. >> host: what did you learn? >> guest: i tell you something that is not in the book directly and some little old leak to the co oblique. someone and norway what's remember now barack obama is in the dogfight maybe that isn't

the right word. in 2009 the red rock star heights. you know why the dtv award? they want to come to oslo and he's the great rock star celebrity of the number one figure how do we grant president obama. the committee wanted to bask in his glory and the chairman thought they would boost him in europe, so i hear this and i think to myself that's ridiculous. i hear from the second and ninth and 15th and 25th whether it is

true or not everyone thinks that i think obama is a person after the committee's own heart. i think they view him as a world view of kind of political and philosophical soul mate. ytd george w. bush was president of nightmares and president barack obama is of the fondest dreams. the design a president from scratch he would turn out a lot like barack obama so if he's a bit of a natural and it's a bit of a way of saying ding dong the witch is dead. this is a new day. >> host: he comes across saying media little embarrassed about the whole thing. >> guest: he seemed sort of mean, doesn't he come he seemed a little sheepish.

this has been an interesting morning. she handled it very capriciously. i think he was put in an awkward spot. throughout his assets i think he tried in his speech he hurricanes back more perhaps than people were expecting to some of that. yes, he did that but that's right he did give the iraq war the back of his hand. he said something like one is at war wendi endowment defended the afghan war quite strongly, and he also said that peace and security with europe had been supported by the blood of the american soldier and things like that. it was more hawkish that's true.

>> we are coming close to the end, so i went to ask in the biggest since it is the peace prize a good idea you come away from the book thinking peace prize makes sense for the world or tomorrow it wouldn't matter? >> guest: it's 1i force myself to answer in my book and i think federline dewitt to the readers to see whether i felt peace prize what's worthwhile. there is enough information in the book to allow readers to make up their own mind that the prize. i give my opinion now and then and i have enough facts so people can make up their mind. you may remember this story i was in the park in oslo by ebook from a vendor and because i had my reporter's hat on i asked what you think of the nobel peace prize and she first answered as a norwegian and said well it put more weight on the

map and i often don't agree with the committee but it's probably good to have won the prize for peace and so many of your things. and i agree. it's a wonderful thing and if someone can affect the nation's that someone deserves a prize even one worth $1.45 million which they were today. it's just this question of what is peace and food deserves to become a champion of peace and not just a champion of peace with the world's foremost three we have our own opinions and someone is about to decide. you and i might think we can do better as the british said is in the gift of these norwegians. >> host: interregional riss about the process because it seems clear even when you disagree strongly with dutch police, you seem to respect the process and the fact that discussion is going on every year even sometimes it goes off the real.

>> guest: done to my head if it were up to me to continue with or deutsch i may regret this leader i would continue to reduce the game associate at scores and we haven't gotten to talk as much on i would have liked but i would finish when you look out there in the world today who might be out there who is a future peace prize winner or should be what you're going to be or not? >> guest: i refer to it as nobel, but they have to wait awhile because they've given it to the former presidents and vice presidents recently so it has to be a decent interval. >> host: they don't have to give him a price to come to oslo. >> guest: that's right. it would be a wonderful thing if it were given to some cubin figure democracy activist and freedom activist or someone like

oscar. it would be a very cold day you know where when the committee gives the nobel peace prize to a cubin freedom figure. the great cuban dissident, the author against all hope remarked with some justifiable bitterness as the cuban dictatorship or right wing instead of left wing we would have won two or three already. i think that's true, and i think the nobel peace prize to a cuban freedom figure would. the dictatorship has been there since the late 1950's. the nobel peace prize would be a very big deal there if, given for civil delis and white and institutions, these women who put their necks out by holding candlelight vigils and so on and publicly praying for their loved