the prize begins in 1901. so you march through the first war and the depression, second war, cold war, the israeli conflict. the war or terror, obama, almost everything. this prize had its finger in many pots. then you have this vast cast of

characters, all these lawyers, and other people who surround the prize, and they're all interesting, at least i found. some people said to me as i was writing the book and the book was lengthening, well, concentrate on the interesting ones but they're all interesting. or at least i found that. and the book -- rather, the subject makes you confront some of the biggest questions concerning war and peace. and freedom and tyranny. and makes you decide what you believe or what you consider nearest true. so, i found it a really rewarding exercise to study the nobel peace prize. it's a juicy subject, regardless. it's a juicy subject. >> i was struck in reading the book that in some ways when you add up all of them, that the peace price is like a rorschach test and it's usually controversial and usually somebody who is very unhappy about it, but over time, almost

anybody can find something to like or hate about it. and we say in golf, every plot pleases shrub, and everybody nobel selection pleases some and some doesn't. >> barack obama winning and some people say what is this about, or a moment when you said, i'd like to look more deeply at this? >> guest: i decided to write a history of the peace prize before obama won, actually. this idea was first suggested in 2002 after the prize was announced for jimmy carter. i thought it was a good idea and put it on the back burner, until 2009, or so and then i returned to it. so, it is true, have to be reminded, the incumbent president is a nobel peace lawyer lawyerette. >> can you tell us about alfred

nobel and the original vision for the peace prize was and how it came to be. >> i love getting to know alfred nobel. i don't know if you found the same. i really enjoyed reading about his life and sketching his life in the book. he jumped out as one of the quint -- quintessential 19th 19th century figures with enthusiasm. >> what a talent. a brilliant chemical engineer and chemist, probably a genius, a brilliant entrepreneur and manager. he presided over an empire of something like 90 factories and facilities. victor hugo called him europe's wealthiest vagabond. the traveled all the time. managing these factories and inventing, and corresponding, one of the most prolific correspondents of his age. he wrote thousands of letters a year, and in five or six or

seven tongues. the wrote in the tongue of the recipient. enjoyed reading his letters. a complicated man. sometimes a idealist, sometimes a dark, dark cynic, and 355 pat tents know, famous invention is dynamite, but we're told by people who know -- i'm not one -- we're told be people that know that dynamite is not his motion significant invention but it's the most famous. and there's a myth he established this price for peace over guilty for his invention of dynamite, and i think i say in my book it's hard to know exactly what is in a man's head and heart but this seems not to be true. it seems he was quite proud of his achievements in the area of explosives. it built what we call infrastructure, canals, tunnels, railroads. the transpacific railroad in this country insuring -- in

fact, he also was a great believer in the power of deterrence, the ability of taylor terrible weapons, and i think if he had seen the war his views would be different. he dies in 1896 and writes his will, one of the most famous wills written, in 1895 and wills -- want me to shut up for a while. i have monologuing. >> go ahead. gives an interesting figure and your book wrestles a lot with his vision for the peace prize, and how well the vision is served or isn't served and that's a dom inept theme of the back. >> i found that an american would think that the will is kind of like the u.s.

constitution. there are people whoa interpret it strictly, and there are people who are really loose about it. it's a living document. it's a vessel we fill with our thoughts and the times and so on. so, the will is often ignored and now and then followed. but he establishes the five prizes. and in his order they are, fies seconds -- always thought it should start with them which i tut starts with physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. and what's missing there is economics. it's not a real nobel prize. it's an addon from the 1960s. it was established by the central bank of sweden. and it's formal name is, i think, something like the central bank of sweden prize in economic science in memory of alfred nobel. they don't mind if you and i call it a nobel prize. they're happy not to correct us, i think, but informally it's not a nobel breeze. it's something else. but in any case.

alfred nobel established the five prizes and the last four, peace, and he wants the prize to be given prisonfully for those who further the cause of fraternity between nations -- his signal phrase in the will regarding the peace prize, fraternity between nations, and also he wants all of his prizes to be awarded for work done during the preceding year. this was a surprise to me. i always thought they were kind of cumulative awards or lifetime achievement wears or golden handshakes at the end of a career. i think if i didn't do the math but i think that probably no more than 10 or a dozen of the winners as you write about them probably actually fulfilled the specific criteria that nobel laid out. >> one could easily do a count and i did not but i think that's true. >> host: one other moment you should talk about is the kind of the norwegian-ness at the heart of the peace price and the time when the peace prize was

created. so. talk about that a little bit. there is a very special quality from norway i think is important to the peace prize, all the nobels, really. >> guest: yes. well, he has -- alfred nobel has five prizes and gives four of them to swedish bodies to administer. he did most of his growing up in st. petersburg, very cosmo poll continue and a sweetish patriot. and he gives four prizes to sweden and the fifth one to norway. and he asks them to elect a committee of five, and he doesn't say the five committee members must be norwegian and there was aday bite in -- debate, should we have an all-norwegian panel oar

international. but since day one it's been an all-norwegian panel, and some of my norwegian friends don't like this but i think some could say the norwegian people elect the legislature, they elect the nobel committee, and the peace prize is the reflex of the norwegian people and their political culture. >> host: how do you think that informs -- >> guest: democratic, mainly. they're very strongly democratic, collectivist country, and solidarity is important. they're not reds. they're not come commies. they may be a little pink certainly by american standards. there is one reaganite party in norway now called the progress party. >> host: some tension emerges between norway is a small country, and it was allied with

you said sweden nor a long time. i. >> guest: in union with sweden. >> host: so a funny cosmopolitan aspect to norway as a small country, and at the same time a kind of a parochialism. >> guest: a fishing village before oil. >> host: this show won't be seen in norway. >> guest: believe it or not. some people may snicker but sweden at the end of then 19th century, beginning of the o20th, was bit of a power. not a great power but substantial. significant. and norway was not. and so the life was norway would be disinterested and pure, above it all, without real geo political interests. objectiveness. an are bitter of mankind, and like other little nations, it

absolutely adore international organizations, places great emphasis on the u.n., as it did to the league of nations and before the league of nations, the interparliamentry union. >> host: and organizations that crop up in its history. like the red cross, particularly, which has won three or four nobels. >> guest: three. >> host: certain organizations comes book to as well, particularfully wartime, and certain moments that you have a soft spot for. doctors without borders. >> guest: sure. this isn't very -- this is another impolite thing, i'll say. international organizations are a way for the very little and powerless country to be somebody. i think the near norwegians are keen to check american power and the regard international organizations as checks on american power. >> host: do you think it's american power because of

something about america or do you think it's any dominant world power and it's just been america's moment for quite some time? >> guest: probably the latter. certainly since world war ii. >> host: i had the impression when i read the back that you -- went into it thinking some things about the nobel peace prize. we all have opinions and like to debate it. and that as you reported some of what you thought maybe turned out to be true, and some of it may have challenged your conceptiones. can you talk about what surprised you about the process and what you learned of the peace prize, and where you had a particular conception that turned out to be true. >> guest: many of the lawyer yets i did not know. and i enjoyed getting to know them. i enjoyed getting to know albert

john lutuli. >> host: in 1968. >> guest: yet, zulu chief and present of anc and a dedicated christian, great man, strong man, and meek man, very much enjoyed getting to know him. his kind, he was a practitioner of nonviolence. an advocate of nonviolence, and his kind went away with the banning of the anc and going underground the rice of people like mandela. i very much enjoyed getting to know him and many others, including a german pacifist. named kredna. quidde. some of these pacifists were quite sensible and even stern and brave, and the in my time in our time, the word pacifist has been a bit of a slur. and if you call someone a pacifist, he may well object, but before world war 2 and

before world war i, you might say, you're a pacifist, and they might say, what are you a mill tarrist? and they were wrong, in my judgment, but they weren't monolithic, they were different, and took different actions. i found peace very slippery concept. i have a section in there on peace. abused concept. and an elusive concept. what is peace? we know it's not the mere absence of war. everyone says that but it's not war, either. is war the worst thing in the world? probably not. but it's a nasty, horrible, murderous thing to be avoided if you can there comes a time to stand and fight. these are all tricky questions, and i guess what i found was that nobel peace prizes all together are mixed bags. a few of the prizes i think that are clearly good or clearly bad,

i think most of the time the nobel committee has had a case -- even arafat. a lot of people said to me as i was writing the book and i would tell them what i was doing, the history of the nobel peace prize and they would say, didn't arafat win that? and for them that'ses of the the story. what more do you need to know? and there was a committee member who resigned after that award to arafat, and i would have been with him i think. but it's well to remember that arafat did not win the prize alone number 1994. he won it in concert with two israeli statesmen, the prime minister ran rabin, and the foreign minister, and they were happy to appear with arafat to accept the prize, and the foreign minister went out of his way to say in his nobel's lecture that arafat's sharing of

the prize was fitting. >> host: i thought throughout your book was that you were taking seriously the winner's -- reading their speeches, listening to their words, trying to see their views, and then along the way, you mention the pacifist -- you were open-mined about what you discovered about people, even if you disagreed with them. and i think the strongest in the book is one you just eliedded to. this wrestling with piece. that's -- wrestling with peace, and that's been there all this time. and what does jump out is the sort of interesting ongoing discussion and debate. even on the nobel committee. years where they come out and talk about a candidate and you think, as a reader, boy, they got it wrong, and the next year they -- the same people give a stirring speech and address. >> guest: yes. that's right. that's right. and in my view. some of the laureates turn but

they didn't win -- take line news linus. great supporter of the soviet union, apologist for the soviet union. he won not just the nobel peace prize but the lynnin peace prize in the soviet government which began life as the stalin peace prize, and the said the prize from the sowf yet meant more than the prize from the norwegians. he won the chemistry prize which was clearly deserved and won a peace prize because of his advocacy of the nuclear test ban which would signed by president expend -- president kennedy and other -- >> i. >> host: i want to talk about other nobel winner skis wanted

to come back to something you started to speak about which was the notion of peace, and the wrestling with that. howl do you see the concept in terms of -- you have an essay where you talk about peace, and it is a slippery concept, and the prize is well beyond the boundaries of alfred nobel laid down. did you come out of those experiences of thinking that kind of fluidity and flexibility was good or do you think there's a certain different guideline or way to think about peace that is more useful? how do you see -- what is peace from your view? >> guest: uh-huh. there's political peace. or national peace. or world peace. there's individual peace or spiritual peace. margaret thatcher liked to talk about peace with freedom and justice. the soviets -- they were the peace-loving nation and their below can. the west called themes the

freedom loving nation. the soviet named their space mir, and that is peace. and peace is absolute submission to the parties and state. the kind of peace, stability, dictatorial stability. not our kind of peace. we think more about peace with freedom. and big buckley said that sometimes the biggest concepts can be boiled down to embarrassing bumper sticker language, better dead than recommend better read than dead. new hampshire license plate says live free or die. kerrick but how -- okay, but how many are willing to follow that? are we all brave hearts? stand and fight? these are all tough questions. i am very aware, when people

talk about peace -- we have that phrase, peace, peace, there is no peace, and you anyway remember the sing criticism of tony blair. he was going off to do some diplomacy in the arab-israeli conflict and he said to george w. bush before he left. if i win the nobel peace prize you'll know i failed. and i -- even i'm not that hard. i'm a norwegian. >> you suspect tony blair wouldn't mind if he won the nobel peace pride sunny don't think he would turn it down. so, peace -- if someone like me -- and i'm reagan conservative, and i'm -- someone like me can listen to what mccarthur called peace cracks. peace is just a joke, a snare in the delusion, a crock. real peace isn't. we're not very far in new york from grant's tomb. they joke about grant's tomb. who is buried in grant's toupe

tomb. and it says, let there be peace. war killed over 600,000 people, americans. and the population wasn't that large at the time. just think of it. the carnage, and i think war is necessary and just and right every now and then but there's nothing like true peace. i quote in my book, a line from orwell, before the war, even the boor war, when there was peace, there was summer all year around. if you can get peace, you have gotten something. but the question is, used to say, you talk about peace, but whose peace? bulgaria's? poland? these are tough questions. >> host: let's talk about the winners and give us a chance to reflect more on some of them.

i called out the ones that strike me. >> guest: who do you like? >> host: well. >> guest: who did you enjoy getting to know? >> host: well, one of the ones i wanted to ask you about, who i thought really stood out, is probably carl bonoff. >> guest: i think 1935. i believe if i am not mistaken, decade in which a couple of nobels're skipped. we should mention that used to be much more common than it has become in recent years to not award a peace prize and many decades, one, two are three years that were skipped. >> guest: you're right. now it comes every year like christmas. to somebody, anyway. but he stood out as a fairly compelling figure, and. >> guest: bravest men of his time. >> host: talk about him. did you know him before you started doing research?

>> guest: only vaguely. he was a german journalist and pacifist. he was jailed even before the rise of the nazis for criticizing german rearmament, for german violations of the versailles treaty. he was walking around when the nazis were elected to power and they arrested him and put him into a concentration camp. prison and concentration camps s and tortured him. demand he renounce this principles. he refuses. they torture him almost to death. there was campaign, especially bay german nobel lauer yet. to get him the peace prize. they thought might save his life and they wanted to honor -- the

phrase of the time -- the other germany, the better germany, and they gave hem the peace prize in 1946 for 1945, and i think good-les went to him and told him to refuse it, and he told him to stuff it, and they wouldn't let him out to go to oslo help died in a sanitarium. they gave him better quarters but he died in 1938, i think. and it was a gutsy decision of the nobel committee because germany was threatening the norwegian government. and it would be very bad for norway, and norway had stayed neutral in the first world war and were hoping to say neutral in the second one if there was too be one. sweden was very cross over this, and hitler and his government for bad any germans to accept

any prizes in any fields and they created their own prizes. >> host: i believe the first of three times when that was done because the sowf yet did and it the joins started doing it since 2010, i believe. >> guest: you're deed right. ol' chef ski should out because the selection belies something about the nobel peace prices because it was a brave choice, and there was debate on the committee about neville chamberlain who did not get it. >> guest: if there had been a '31 prize, which there wasn't. the prize is announced the second friday of october. the prize was kind of suspended during the war but if there had been a prize for '39.

probably neville chamberlain would have received it. so was hoyt her. if you're going to nominate the british signatory, might as well nominate the german signatory. the nomination of hitler was strong but chamber line might very well have received a prize had there been one for '39. >> host: let me go back to the first really controversial pick, which was teddy roosevelt. >> guest: oh. they're still grousing about that one. still upset about the prize to tr. >> guest: it's actually interesting. it does happen in the prize history that somebody like t.r., who is a little more militaristic, or strong defense in his personality, pops up everyone once in a while -- >> guest: opposite in a blue moon. >> host: tell me about his nobel

sunny can quote "the new york times" who said, broad smile surely illuminated the face of the globe who is this prize for peace was given to the most warlike citizen of these united states. said "the new york times." they were upset. he had mediated a truce in the russian japan war in 1905 that led the ports mouth treaty signed. and the was a friend of the arbitration movement. those who wanted international disputes to be settled not by war but on international court in hole land. he was friendly to his cause, and also a very strong believer in deterrence, and in his memoirs he wrote the best thing he did for peace was to send the u.s. battle fleet around the global that didn't set well with some people. but his nobel lecture which he gives on a grand tour, world tour, is majestic and true.

one of the best meditations on peace i've ever read, frankly. what a writer, t.r. was. i occasionally forget that. >> host: an history yap from the earliest days. what stands out.the address? >> guest: he wrestles with, what is peace, after install and he says, let it not be an excuse for tyranny. >> host: also the first -- said the first real peace through strength figure in the nobel's history, which is -- >> guest: general marshall in 1953. >> host: very interesting one, which i wanted to talk about. and actually one i think you say was pretty -- at that anytime europe he was extremely popular figure, and there wasn't much debate about that. although his speech was an interesting speech, too. >> guest: well, he won -- you and i think it's a great contribution to peace was

defeating the nazis. he didn't win for that. he want for the marshall plan. the only one nod to call it. he called it the european recovery program. everybody else called it the marshall plan. that's what he won for them same day winston churchill was honored in stockholm with the literature prize but marshall gives a most unusual nobel lecture. the nobel lecture least like a nobel lecture. he says disarmament and demobilization and demille tarrization had been disastrous for his country and other democracies. we were back on our heels before world war ii and we're back on our heels again unprepared for korea, and he said basically much better language than mike it's soldiers like me who have to clean up after people like you. people like me who have to send young men to die because we weren't properly defended, because we were ignorant of our

enemies and that's not the kind of thing they're used to hearing in oslo. the prize was controversial abuse after all he is the chief of staff of the army. he gave a very, very thoughtful and to me commonsensical speech. >> host: how did it go over? it was controversy bull he was pop -- popular figure. >> guest: he was a controversial in the chattering classes, controversial prize or choice. on the left. among academies. among nobel peace prize devotees, people revered george marshall. who in a way reconstructed europe and did some of what her herbert hoover did after the first world war. >> host: 1950, a figure who i think was quite prominent then,

was ralph bunch in 19 50. one who stood out. very prominent at the time. not very well remembered today but another very interesting figure. can you talk about him? >> guest: i remember him being on the u.s. postage stamp a couple decades ago and i was glad to see that bunch was one of the most impressive men we have known. he was born in 1903 or 1904. he himself wasn't sure. a black kid. born in detroit. makes his way tola. -- makes his way to l.a. parents are dead after he is 13, and he went to a white high school in l.a. he is a sports star and valedictorian, a sports star at ucla and valedictorian, a black american in the teens and 20s.

the black women of l.a. raise $1,000 in cash for him to put in his pockets as he goes across the country to harvard. he is the first black person to earn a phn -- ph.d in mitt cal as soon as. he has a flirtation with the left and hard left and rejects them and becomes a u.n. diplomat, and presides over truce negotiations between israel -- the new state of israel and its arab attackers in 1948 and 1949. he was a nobel peace prize in 1950. the nobel committee was very keen on honoring the new united nations, give it a boost, and they're keen on saying the u.n. shall be the arbiter of disputes and bunch was the first nonwhite recipient of the nobel peace prize for keeping score.

>> oo. >> host: he jumps out of the pages. several figures, plume sentence in his day, not very well known today but worth getting to know again. one of the great things the book does. >> guest: a smart cookie and an all-american. >> host: you talked about the arafat rabin perez award. one that me a even be more controversial, i think you know what i mean. from 1973. the most controversial nobel prize of any kind ever given. can you talk about that? dr. kissinger. >> guest: well in january 1973, kissinger, the national security adviser, and leduc to signed the paris agreement, and the north immediately violates it, explodes it.

but as the committee gives the prize to kissinger and leduc to, and kissinger is secretary of state, and kissinger was a little embarrassed. >> host: he makes eluigses to other nobel winners and his own unworthiness. >> guest: i think it made relations with president nixon a little awkward because nixon wanted the peace prize and worked so hard for peace with honor, as he called it, but kissinger gets and it leduc to refuses the prize which is an insult in a way. kiss kin jerry doesn't go to collect and it in 1975. when saigon falls and the treaty is nothing, he tries to return the prize. the medal, the diploma and the money, and the norwegians and say the nobel peace prize is not

returnable. you earned it for what you did then. this is not a contingent on future success. you win it for work you have already done, and kissinger says in his memoirs he would have rather won the nobel peace prize for his shuttle diplomacy in the middle east as he was proud of. and the nobel peace prize in 1986 telegrams -- >> telegram or fax. >> guest: and says, i was not proud of my own prize. i am proud of yours. >> host: the '73 one is interesting. particularly the kissinger half of it. >> guest: todd says that satire ceases to possible when kissinger won the nobel peace prize. it's far more showing that the envoy of a totalitarian dike tatership won the nobel peace

prize. >> host: i think what is interesting about the prize is that in one sense it's defensible because he was more closely the actual parameters that nobel laid out at a time when, after years in which vietnam embroiled the worlds and there was real hope or relief, but as youles go on to point out a few years later after they fall of saigon, tens of thousands, hundredses of thousands of people die in vietnam. it's a -- goes to a different kind of a peace where there is a unified vietnam but it's not a peaceful situation at all. so you can look at the prize and almost everybody can see something to dislike in that prize. >> guest: i was impressed by something i heard vernon walters, the late general and

diplomat and cia agent said. he said for 12 years in vietnam there was terrible war. bombs rained down on every city, town, village, and hamlet in south vietnam, and no one budged. no one budged during that time. it took the coming of peace, if you will, the wrong kind of peace to send six or seven hundred thousand out into the south china sea on wood or tires, anything that might float to risk piracy and tee hydration and drubbing -- drowning and it took peace to do that. and i remember that concentrated my mind a bit. when i heard that. that it took peace to send those almost a million out into the south china sea, fleeing in terror. what kind of peace is that? and why is that better than war? >> host: actually one of the interesting things the prize does. it provokes asking yous and

reflexes and thoughts about peace and what we think of peace and over time in some cases as that that one did, it's still debated and argued about. the '70s was a busy year for the price. one is the zakaroff prize. >> guest: a leading soviet, russian, dissident, threw with a his career at the top of the russian scientific heap to speak up for human rights and freedom and dignity. and the norwegian committee gives him the prize in 1975. soviet communism lasted -- communist in power from 1917 to 1991, and of course there were

great many heros in this period. dissid dents, political prisoners, prisoners of conscience, activists of different kinds and all over the communist world, the soviet bloc, and there are only two awards given by the norwegians to people in the antisoviet cause, you mew saying. and lech walesa in 1983. there were three antiapartheid awards but the awards zacarofd and the award to electric electric would lens. >> host: is reflects the confection of the peace discussion and a different view of what we mean by peace. because it is the same way that -- some of the antiapartheid ones that you

mentioned might. they are essentially not specifically related to fraternity between nations. they're sort of within nations and actually recognizing really prisoners of conscience, the term for want of a better one, simply for their moral stance and their forcefulness and views which is a popular way to win the peace prize but is different than nobel might have perceived it. >> guest: i wonder what he might have thought. i asked my questions these questions about what the peace prize should be. i think the committee should follow the will but that rules out some of the best prizes. that would rule out the prize to electric would lens a, and he told me in an interview without the nobel peace prize his solidarity cause in pole land could never have succeeded. he said there was no wind blowing in theel poland sails.

>> host: they're aware that the peace prize at the right time to the right person can impact events. >> guest: yes. it can be a win. learned something from a book bat nicaragua. and the they give the 1987 nobel peace price to the president of costa rica and tell him privately we're giving you this award to use as a weapon against reagan because they were in disagreement about central america, and ariaf told bob kagan, reagan was responsible for my prize. so this can be an award with power. some people think it gave tiny east timor its freedom, its independence. has it brought down dictator

ships? no, but chi-chi he aung san suui he is still benefiting from it. >> she was famous before and she is more famous after. same with the dalai lama, i would say, who received the nobel peace prize in 1989. what it's done for tibet. not much. practically, but people know the cause. people know the dali llama personally and the cause of tibet and the nobel peace prize is not solely responsible for that but i has helped. >> host: went to the chinese and stayed there. there are a lot -- we could talk for hours but i want to go the

decade -- some of the most controversial nobels. in two ways. the political side, and the definition of peace changes again over the last ten years with some of the prizes. i'm thinking of al gore's prize particularly. talk about the last decades' worth of nobels because you spent a lot of time. we can save barack obama. but talk about the bush years. >> what. >> guest: 2001, right after 9/11, the prize goes to the unatees nations and the secretary general kofi annan. it's the centennial of the nobel prizes and it was enough for the nobel committee to honor the expugn they were admonishing the american administration in the new war against terror, don't you dare go it alone. everything must go through the

u.n. of the that was a message about the peace prize, and the chairman in his. >> host: you know that. >> guest: the chairman was explicit in his presentation speech he gave at the prize ceremony. and he was very explicit the next year when the prize goes to jimmy carter. and when chairman announces the prize to carter, he says, this prize is intended not just as a personal award for mr. carter but as a kick in the leg to the american administration and all that follow that line, and a kick in the leg is an expression that we learned it a norwegian way of saying slap in the face or poke in the eye. so that was carter. >> host: 2003, the iranian human rights lawyer. 2004, massi, kenyan environmental list. 2005 -- >> host: let's stop there. environmental. the first environmentalist. >> guest: the nobel goes green. >> oo.

>> host: right. and controversial a little bit in the sense of bringing environmentalism into the concept of peace as we see. i. controversial for some people, anyway. >> guest: that's right. environmentalism was on the rise. he was also honored -- i don't believe there had ever been a black woman, and the nobel chairman said, this is meant to honor the women of africa in general as well. she was a very interesting figure. launched a tree-planting movement, political dissident. a woman of talent, formidable, and came over to the united states to study the same program as barack obama, sr. from kenya. and there's been other quasienvironmental nobels. the 1970 award to the great egroenist, and 1949 award to john boyd orr, the first leader of the sao. die have the initial roads?

food anding a cultural organization of the u.n. maybe 2004 was the first explicitly green in the contemporary sense award. '05, the international atomic energy agency and its then general director. people wondered, is this another kick in the leg it? was. seems clear. 2006, mohamed unis, the microlender. off the beaten path of the nobel peace prize. >> host: more of president clinton lob yesterday very hard for him to get a lot of sort of institutional support out there. >> guest: yes. he was always advocating the peace prize for unis, and the chairman says, bill clinton can get off our back. clinton seems to be one of the few top democrats not be a noble nobel peace lauerette.

>> host: neither clinton. >> guest: there you go. >> host: i'm trying to think if relatives have won the peace prize. i don't think so. >> host: well, madam -- she won two scientific prizes, first with her husband. >> host: i can't remember -- part of the founding -- won in the '50s. wife of one of the earlier -- widow of. >> guest: , we thinking of alva mirdahl, one of the first economic prizes. >> host: i. the name. al gore. >> guest: worked under them in the american dilemma crisis when bunch was a young karl. >> host: go on to al gore. that's definitely myung the most

controversial. >> guest: i have a little piece of trivia. the sub title of my book is history of the world's most famous and controversial prize, and i think pretty clearly the most controversial prize but the business of fame, the most famous, that may be a bit of a fudge because it could be tied with or perhaps passed by he oscar. i'm not sure you measure that. some global gallup but they're probably about tied. and one man in one year, 2007, wins both awards and that was al gore. amazes me. almost surely will never happen again and i say if you're going to lose the presidency in such a hard way smith compensation to win the world's -- argument of the two most famous prizes in the same year, and he says this at his nobel lecture, the peace prize is a kind of balm following the extraordinary presidential episode in 2000. but, yes, the global warming

campaign, which was at its an pogy, looked a little less good every with climate gate and might have been lucky to win when they won, but win it they did in 2007. >> host: do you think in the history of the nobels when you look at these controversial ones from the last decades were we'll talk about president president k obama in a minute -- do you think there's been a shift how they think of the peace prize in oslo in the last decade versus the first hundred years or are some of these just sort of within the tradition of the prize going back and forth? >> guest: there's always -- there's some evolution. i think that the norwegian nobel committee is vulnerable to fashion, trend diness, what is hot now, what is cool now. and the global warming was very coal, no joke intended in 2007.

and the 2008 aired was given to a finish trouble shooter, a u.n. diplomat. but some people said the committee should beway of celebrity selections. there's been a number of celebrities in oslo in recent years, with obama being maybe the biggs -- biggest but the committee likes to say there are many paths paths to peace and is given to diplomas and mew man tearans, mother therese, microlenders, globe warming campaigners, arafat. different paths to peace, and almost always have a case. i think the -- global warming award was my own view of gore and the intergovernmental panel on climate change. that award is a little far afield. such departure from the will aim not a sure it's defensible but

it's their award. the five committee members determine the award and the rest of us are spectators who pick at it. >> host: what did you learn about the obama prize? >> guest: when? >> host: what did you learn. >> guest: i'll tell you something that's not in the book directly. i think it's a little oblique in the book. after obama was announced, someone in norway said to me, do you know why they gave him the prize? let's remember how to that president obama is now in a dog fight, maybe that's not the right word given recent events -- for the presidency in 2009, he was at rock star heights. the great figure around the globe. and this guy tells me after the award is announced, they gave him the award, they want him tom could oslo and have this bauble to give and the world's great rock star, the biggs celebrity, the number one figure. how do we bring the u.s. president, president obama to

our remote icy little capitol? we have the nobel peace prize to give him. and the committee just wanted to bask in his glory, and the commitey chairman could boost him in europe to have obama as the winner. so i hear this one fellow say this and i think to myself, that's ridiculous. nonsense. and i hear from a second norwegian, and a ninth, and a 15th, and a 25th. and then i discover that whether it's true or not, everyone thinks it. everyone thinks it. i don't know. i think that obama is a person after norwegian's own hearts. they consider him a political and philosophical south mate. george w. bush was a out of their night mare. president obama is a president

of their fond dreams and i said if the nobel committee could design a president from scratch he would turn out by president obama so it was a way of saying, ding-dong the witch is dead. that rotten george w. bush is no longer in the oval office. there's a wonderful new guy. >> host: yet he comes across in the -- as you recount the episode as maybe little embar read about the whole thing. >> guest: seemed a little sheepish when he first cam out of the white house. he said, this has been an interesting morning. handled it very graciously. i think he was put in an awkward sport. >> host: it was a political awkward position for him to be in, and then throughout his visit to oslo, and accepting of the prize, he was -- tried hard to be modest and actually in his speech he harkens back a bit more perhaps than people were expecting to some of that peace

through strength theme. >> guest: yes, he did that. that's exactly right. he did give the iraq war the back of his hand. he didn't even use the word iraq. he said something about the war that's winding down and then defended the afghan war strongly. and he also said that the peace and security of europe had been supported by the blood of the american soldiers. things like that. george marshal-like thingsment one of his more, i would say, hawkish addresses. that's true. >> host: we're coming close to the end so i want to ask you, in the biggest sense, is the peace prize a good idea? did you come away from the book thinking the peace prize makes sense, ads to the world for all of its flaws or if it went away tomorrow wouldn't matter. >> guest: you put your finger on an important question and it's one i force myself to answer. i figure i owed it to readers to say whether i thought the peace

prize was worth while and i hope there's enough information in this look to allow readers to make up their own minds. i give my opinion now and then. more than now and then but also have enough facts so people can make up their own mind. you may remember this story. nice a sculpture park in as low -- oslo buying a book from a vendor, and i asked him what the howth at the time the peace prize and he answered as a citizen and said, it put norway on the map. and he said i don't always agree but at it good to have one price for peace, and i agree. genuine peace is a wonderful thing. and if someone can effect fraternity between nations, that someone deserves a prize, even one worth $1.5 million. it's just this question of, what is peace and who deserves to be

crowned a champion of peace and not just a champion of peace but the world's form yost, we all have our own opinions and you and i might think we can do better but as the british say, it's in the gift of the five norwegians. >> you're generous about the process. even when you disagree at times strongly with the choice, you seem to respect the process and the fact that the discussion is going on every year, even if sometimes it goes off the rails. >> guest: yes. i think on balance it's worthwhile. gun to my head, continue it or ditch it, i would continue it. >> host: there's a parlor game with the peace prize and we haven't gotten to talk much parlor game as i would have liked, but i just want to finish by asking you, when you look out there, who might be out there

who is a future peace prize winner, or should be, more than they are going to be or not? >> guest: well, i refer to the clinton global initiative as nobel bait but he might have to wait a while because it has been given american presidents. >> host: or don't give him a prize to get him to come to oslo. >> guest: that's right. i think it would be wonderful if it were given to some cuban figure, some democracy activist, freedom activist, a prisoner of -- i think it will be a cold day no you where when the peace prize goes to a cuban freedom figure. the great cuban dissident, the author of "against all hope" remarked to me with some justifiable bitterness, if the cuban dictatorship were right wing instead of left wing would we woo have won two or three

nobel peace prizes already. i think that's true. the nobel peace prize to a cuban freedom figure would rock that dictatorship. which has been there since then 1950s a. thigh give it to ladies in white. they give toys groups now and then these women who put their -- stick their necks out by holding candlelight vigils and so on, and publicly praying for their loved ones in prisons. be an awfully good thing itself the norwegian gave the prize to a cuban but i wouldn't wait up nights. >> host: we're out of time. that was a pretty negative note to end on. >> host: any other last thoughts. >> guest: i think not. maybe end on a -- touch of bloom. they gave it 0 a chinese freedom fighter in 2010 after 60 years

of passing them over. he sits in a cell today and i hope it's doing him and his movement some good. >> host: jay nordlinger, thank you very much for the great discussion. the book is "peace, they say." >> guest: thank you. ...