i just wanted to say thank you r for writing theit book. >> thank you very much. i hope you enjoy it. and i hope you geti a chance tot show to your friends and let them know that their is some great information there for the young people >> well, that was a wonderful way to enter segment end our segment with kareem abdul-jabbar. here is the book. "what color is my world: the lost history of african-american inventor inventors." as we closer, you just acceptedc a request from hilary rodham clinton to be an ambassador.ral what is the job going to be?to ? >> basically the job entails me going and speaking to people, select groups of young people in various countries and emphasizing the value ofc education. .. ife in america is all about. >> have you done any chance you? >> i have done a trip to brazil. it went very well. i had a great time.

i had great interactions with the people that i met with. >> thank you for interacting with the c-span aud >> host: why this book? >> guest: i thought it was a good idea. it's a very interesting subject to a fine. quite apart from a book and its

policies. it's an interesting subject and i think it not there can only message out. it gives you an overview of the 20th century because the prize, like the other nobel prizes begins in 1991 so you mark through the first floor, the depression, second floor, cold war, arab-israeli conflict. it was a war on terror, obama, almost everything. this prize has his finger in many pot. then you have this vast cast of care bears, all these lawyers and others surround the prizes are all interesting. at least i found. some people said to me the book was lengthening. concentrate on the interesting one. but they're all interesting. and then the book come about that subject makes you confront some of the biggest construction considering war and peace and

freedom and tyranny and makes you decide what you believe or what you consider nearest true. so i founded a really rewarding exercise to study the nobel peace prize. it is a cheesy subject regardless of what i've done with it. >> host: and families when you add up all of them committed peace prize is worth five. it's usually controversial in a given year. there's usually someone unhappy about it, but over time unless anyone can find someone to like or hate about it. we stand guard. every shot pleases someone displeases someone. >> guest: barack obama winning and people say what is this about? any moment where something clicks. >> guest: i decided to read a history of the peace prize before obama one actually.

this idea was first suggested in 2002 after the prizes 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. i have to be reminded the incumbent president is a nobel peace player. sometimes i forget. >> host: i want to talk about the recent events. can you tell us a little about what she learned about alfred nobel and which are original vision for the peace prize was and how it came to be? >> guest: i do hope you found this. i enjoy sketching about his life. >> host: you checked about one of the quintessential 19 figures with a lot of different interests and to the peace that battles energy in the csm. >> guest: what a talent. he was at brilliant engineer and

cabinets. probably a genius. he was a brilliant entrepreneur and manager. he presided over an empire or something like 90 factories and facilities. victor hugo called in europe's wealthiest vagabond. he traveled all the time, managing these things. still inventing and corresponding. he must've been one of the most blur effect of his age. he wrote dozens of letters a year. he wrote in the tongue of recipient. i enjoyed reading many of his letters. sometimes a sunny idealists and optimists. sometimes a dark, dark cynic and about 355 patterns, his most famous invention is dynamite, but were told by people who know, i'm not one of those, but were told by people in other dynamite is not his most

significant invention, but that is his most famous. there is this meant that he established his prize at his guilt over his invention of dynamite. i say in my book that it's hard to know exactly within the men taking part heart cannot do two things not to be true. it seems he was quite proud of his achievements in the area of explosives. he built what we call infrastructure, canals, tunnels, railroads. he also was a great believer as you recall from the book and the power and the ability to listen over polluter and it turns. if it seemed just the first work on its use would've been different if many people's fears are different. he dies in a think 1896 and write this will, one of the most famous wells that are written in

1895 and he will find the prizes. if you want to shut up for a while it will. i realize that the model again. >> host: go ahead. he's an interesting figure in your book wrestles a lot with his vision for the peace prize and how well the vision it is or isn't anathema throughout dominant themes of the book. >> guest: i think an american with you that the will is kind of like the u.s. constitution. there are people who interpret it strictly and there's people who are really loose about it. it's a living document, a vessel we fill with their own thoughts and with the times. so the willis often been ignored. he establishes the five prizes in his order they are physics. chemistry, physiology or

medicine, literature and peace. what is missing there is economics. it's not a real nobel prize yet it's an add-on. established by the central bank of sweden and its formal name is they think the central bank of sweden prize in economic sciences in memory of alfred nobel. they don't mind if you and i caught a nobel prize. they're happy not to correct if anything, but informally it's not a nobel prize. something else. in any case can establishes five in the last four piece and he wants a price to be given principally for those who further the cause of fraternity between nations. that is the signal phrase in the world regarding the peace process. fraternity between nations. also he wants all of the prizes to be a word for work being done between the year. this is a surprise. i was at the prizes are kind of cumulative rewards are lifelong

achievement words are golden handshakes at the end of an illustrious career. >> i think by doing the math and probably no more than 10 dozen of the winners as you write about them probably actually fulfill the specific criteria that nobel laid out. >> one easily could do an account, but i think that's true. >> pretty quickly there's another element you should talk about, which is kind of a norwegian man at the heart of the peace prize in a time in the peace prize was created. can you talk about that a little bit? there is a very special quality from norway that i think is important in the peace prize. all the nobels really. >> well, he has five prizes in case for them to sweden, two swedish bodies to administer. the bell himself a swedish. he did most of his growing up in st. petersburg. a very cosmopolitan fellow.

very much a universal man, but also the swedish pastry. with the fifth one to norway. he asked to be a norwegian parliament to elect a committee of five to administer the peace prize. he doesn't say fan as well that the five committee members must be norwegian and there was a debate about this in the very beginning in 1900, 1901 connecting the two. to have an all-new version panel or national panel. for since day one it's been on norwegian panel and i say some summit minor region friends don't like what i say this very much, but i think one could say that the norwegian people alike to be the legislature. the legislature? the committee, and therefore the nobel peace prize is a reflection of the norwegian people and their political culture. >> how do you describe a culture? >> democratic mainly. they're very strongly social

democratic, collected this country in which the phrase social solidarity is very important. they're not versus. they're not commies. they may be subtle pink by american standards. there's one called a progress party. >> 's attention that emerges between norway is a small country with sweden for a long time. >> back in 1905. >> so what else comes across funny cosmopolitan aspect to norway as a small country and not the same time that kind of a parochialism as the northern slightly remote country. >> this will be seen in norway,

willie clay >> believe it or not, you know this, some people snicker at this, they sweden into the 19th century, beginning at the 20th was a bit of a power. norway was not. and so the belief was that norway would be disinterested and peer above it all without real geopolitical interests. it's an arbiter of mankind. like other little nations it absolutely adores international organizations but the great emphasis on the u.n. as it did to the nations, emphasis on the league of nations and also before the league of nations cup to enter parliamentary union and organizations that crop up in the history, which is 13 or four in nobels. they're certain organizations coming back to us while, particularly in wartime and a

certain moments. part of it psychologically. it's another impolite thing i'll say. international organizations are away for the federal powerless and country to be somebody. i think that norwegians are very keen to check american power and they another superb international organizations as checks on american powers. >> you think it's american power because of something about america? what you think it's any dominant world power that can america's moment for quite some time? >> probably the latter. certainly since world war ii. >> i had the impression when i read the book that you went into it thinking some things about the nobel peace prize and i suppose we all do. we all like to debate it. and as he reported some of what you would thought may be turn

out to be true and some of which he may challenge a conception. what surprised you about the process in which amended the peace prize and we are you have a particular conception that turned out to be true. >> many i didn't know. i enjoyed getting to know them he was a zulu chief i very much enjoyed getting to know him. he was a product tichenor of nonviolence. but it's going underground with the rise of people like tampa and dallas is very much enjoyed getting to know many others,

including the german pacifists some of these pacifists i must say were quite sensible and stirring. if you call someone a pacifists, you may well object to. but certainly before world war ii, if he said to someone your pacifists, you might was said to you of course i am, militarists? you are wrong in my judgment, but they weren't monolithic. i found peace and very slippery concept. as a section section in their antabuse concept and an elusive concept.

what is peace after all. we know it's not mere absence of war. everyone says that. but it's not for either. as were the worst thing in the world? probably not, but it's a nasty, horrible murderously to be avoided if you can. there comes a time to stand and fight. these are all creepy questions and i guess what i found was the nobel peace prize altogether are a mixed bag. a few of the prizes i think that are clearly good for clearly bad, i think most of the time the nobel committees had a case or caseload, a bit of a case. a lot of people said i was telling him what he was doing commemorating the history of the nobel peace prize. that kind of wrinkled their face and say didn't arafat write that? and for them is the end of the story. what more do you need to know? there is a committee member who

resigned after that awarded that would've been within my thing. but it's well to remember that arafat did not win the price alone in 1894. the prime minister and foreign minister peres. the two of them are happy to a peer with arafat to accept this prize are at least going to do so and the the foreign minister would not eviscerate date that arafat shared the prize was fading, unquote. so arafat -- the arafat example was an interesting one because what i felt throughout was that you were taking seriously bleeding the speeches, listening to the words can assign to see their views and along the way he mentioned the pacifists. you're pretty open-minded about discoveries about people, even if you disagreed with them. i think the strongest emerging

in the book is what you just alluded to, wrestling with peace, what is peace meeting. that's been there since the beginning with alfred nobel. i put it in his will. and what does jump out as an interesting ongoing discussion and debate. you've got the nobel committee. as yours did they can't talk about a candidate that you think is a reader, boy they got it wrong. annexed it the same people give gave a stirring speech address. >> yes, that's right. and maybe some of the laureates turn lassie after they win with that kind of activism, but they weren't awarded for that. the genius are the chemists. certainly a fellow traveler, very supportive of the soviet union. apologist for the soviet union. he won not just the nobel peace prize, but of london piece price of the soviet government, which began like a solid piece price.

he said the price and the soviets meant more to him than the price from the norwegians. but he first won the chemistry prize, which he clearly deserved. he won the peace prize for his advocacy of the nuclear tests, which after it was signed by president kennedy and other warriors. so what you do at that? i think the political lifeless. with that price? maybe not so much. >> i want to talk about some of the nobel winners, but before i do i want to come back with something, which is the notion of peace and the wrestling with that. how do you see the concept, that you have an essay where you talk about peace and it is a slippery concept and the price they're well beyond the boundaries that alfred nobel date down. did you cannot if the experience of this thinking that that kind of lifting flexibility with?

or do you think there's certain different guideline for a rethink about peace that is more useful? what is peace from your view? >> there's political peace international peace or world peace. it's individual peace or spiritual peace. margaret thatcher like to talk about peace that freedom and justice. the soviets were very big on the word peace. there is a peaceloving nations. they had their plot. the west call themselves the soviet loving nation. did that piece as well as world. they were banging on about peace and native favor a certain kind of peace. the peace that comes with absolute submission to the parties and state. that's the kind of peace, stability, dictatorial stability. not our kind of peace. we think more about peace with freedom. and bill buckley said that

sometimes little bit embarrassing, but the biggest concepts can be boiled down to embarrassing bumper sticker language, better dead than red, better read and add. the new hampshire license plates as live free or die. okay, but how many are willing to follow that? our oil brave hearts? when you see in the fighting the accommodation, and these are all tough questions. i'm very weary if people talk about peace. we have that phrase from jeremiah. you may remember that steam criticism that tony blair made. he was going off to do some diplomacy and the arab-israeli conflict. and he said to george w. bush before you ask him if i win the nobel peace prize, but know i failed. even i am not their heart on the nobel peace committee. >> you kind of suspect tony blair wouldn't mind if he won the peace prize. >> i don't think he turned us

down. >> guest: so someone like me and i'm a reagan conservative and some like me can listen to peaceniks of what macarthur called peace cracks. reagan closes in the letter. but peace is just a joke, a stair in the dilution. the real peace isn't. were not very far in new york from grandstand. they joke about grades 10 through berger state park over here if i have my bearings. i what buy it now and then and it says let there be peace. were killed over 600,000 people, americans. in the population wasn't that large at the time. just think of the carnage. and i think war is necessary and just and right every now and then, but this nothing like true peace. i caught them at the good of the

slain from orwell. a consummate the lines coming up for air. before the war, when there is peace, it was some or all of the year round. if you can get peace, you've really gotten something. but the question is, you guys talk about peace, but whose peace? pullman for mobile various combat peace of the grave? these are tough questions. >> guest: let's talk about some of the winners and give us a chance to reflect more on them. i pulled out some of the one. >> host: did you enjoy getting to know if i may ask. one of the ones that really stood out was probably crop up if he escaped. 1935. during i believe if i'm not mistaken a decade in which a couple of nobels during

depression. we should mention it used to be much more common than it has become in recent years. there's many decades in which one, to commit three years or escape. klesko outcomes every yearly christmas. for somebody anyway. but he stood out as a fairly compelling figure. talk about him a little bit. did she know about him a little bit? >> guest: only vaguely. he was a german journalist and pacifists. he was jailed even before the rise of the not seize for criticizing the resize treaty. but he was free to walk around in 1933 when the nazis to power and put them into a

geo-concentration camps to torture him. the man who renounced his principles he refuses. they tortured us almost to death. there's a campaign, especially by a german nobel laureates and other fields to get in the peace prize. they wanted him to have a peace prize for a few reasons. first he thought it might save his life. second he wanted to honor -- this is a phrase at the time. the other germany, the better germany. they did give him the peace prize in the 1936 for 1935. may think he went to ocs to refuse it to know cs know cs told them to stefan and of course they would let them out to go to oslo. he died in a sanitary them. they gave him better quarters, but he died in 1938 i think and he lives in tennessee guy and

there is a gutsy decision of the nobel committee because he was threatening the region government. if you got this price it would be very bad for norway and norway had state neutral in the first world war and they're hoping to stay neutral in the fact that there is to be one. iraq's regions though, too. and hitler and his government forbade germans to accept any nobel prize in any field and they created their own prices, a substitute about and for the duration, those prices are in place. >> guest: i think that three times it was done against the soviets did it in the chinese had started doing it since 2010. >> guest: you are dead right. >> host: instead uprightly because in some senses he's a great individual himself. his selection by some of what we

might take about the nobel peace prize because it is to pick at that time in europe. there is debate i think i'm the committee about neville chamberlain. we did not get into the debate. >> guest: date than 39 price, which there wasn't, not since they put in september 1st that since the second friday of october. the price is kind of suspended. if a better price for 39, probably neville chamberlain would've received it. so was hitler by swedish parliamentarian. if you're going to dominate the british signatory, as well nominate the german signatory. they were alike did. >> the nomination of hitler was withdrawn. but chamberlain that was received. >> let me go back to the first

controversial pick abolishes teddy roosevelt. >> host: they're still upset about the price. >> guest: is actually interesting because again it does hatpin and the price history that somebody like tr who is a little more militaristic hate to say it or at least postpone defense in the personality pops up. >> guest: i can quote "the new york times" who said a broad smile surely eliminated the face of the globe on this price for peace with given to the most warlike defendant these united states at "the new york times." they were upset. but he had been mediated a truce and the russo japanese war 1905 that led to the portsmouth treaty in september 1905,

portsmouth, new hampshire. new hampshire. he was a friend of the arbitration movement. those who wanted to be settled not by work, but in an international court in holland. he was friendly to this cause. but it is also very strong believer in deterrent and in his memoirs he wrote the best thing he did for peace is to send the u.s. battle fleet around the globe. that didn't sit well with some people. his nobel election after his presidency was on a grand tour, world two or is majestic and true. it is one of the best meditations on piece i've ever read frankly. what a writer tr was. >> host: he was an historian the earliest days. >> guest: he wrestles with what we were talking about. what is peace after all? he says let it not be an excuse for charity. he's also the first -- the first

real piece to restrain figure. >> host: general marshall in 1953. actually one that i think you say it was pretty calm calm at that time in an extremely popular figure and there wasn't much debate about that, although his speech was an interesting speech, too. >> guest: well come to you and i think his great contribution to speech was to defeat the nazis. he didn't win for that. he went for the marshall plan. he was the only one not to call it. he caught up his formal name, everyone else calls it the marshall plan. the sandy winston churchill was honored with the literature prize, not the peace prize. the marshall gives him the most unusual nobel lecture, probably the nobel lectures eastlake a nobel lecture. he says that disarmament and

demobilization and demilitarization i've been disastrous for his country and further democracies. we were back on our heels before world war ii and we are back at her house again unprepared for korea. he said basically much better link that soldiers like me who have to clean up after people like you and officers like me have to send young men to die because they were properly defended because we were enemies. that is not the kind of thing they're used to hearing and oslo. it seems controversial because even after all he was with the army and he gives the theory, very, very thoughtful into the commonsensical speech. >> host: was controversially say, but he was also a very popular figure. >> guest: when i see controversial, with waiting? i'm in controversial and that is

the classes. controversial price, controversial choice on the left among academics and peace prize. people were revered who in the way reconstructed europe. he did some of what herbert hoover to unwin is one of the men nominated for the price who never won it. >> guest: 1950, a figure who was quite prominent than in 1850 was the one who stood out. very prominent at the time, not well remembered today, but another interesting figure. can you talk about him at that? >> guest: i remember him being on a u.s. postage stamp a couple decades ago. i was glad to see that. one of the most impressive men we have known. he's born in 1903 or 1904. he himself wasn't sure.

a black kid born in detroit and makes his way to l.a. parents are gone, parents are dead inside and he went to a white high school in l.a. he is the sports star and the ballot touring in. a pasco scholarship to ucla. again a sports star and the valedictorian of ucla. when you're talking about a young black american in the 19 teens and 20s. the black women of l.a. raised a thousand dollars in cash for him to put in his pockets to go across the country to herbert. he's the first black person to earning phd in political science in america for many university. as a master's in harvard as well. he has a flirtation with the left of the hard left, but he rejects them and becomes a u.n. diplomat and presides over truce

negotiations between israel, the new state of israel and arab attackers in 1948 and 1949 when he was the nobel peace prize in 1950. he was very keen on honoring the new united nations, giving it a boost and very keen on saying the u.n. shall be the arbiter of disputes in the bunch was the first nonwhite recipient of the nobel peace prize for those keeping score. >> host: they're several figures as one who is prominent in this day, not well remembered today, but worth getting to know a as one of the great things that the book. made mistakes for sure, but a smart cookie and all-american. >> guest: you typed a little bit earth that regime. is one that may even be more

controversial. i think you may need from 1973. >> guest: dr. kissinger. >> host: in january 1973, kissinger and natural security adviser and the north vietnamese and syria signed the paris agreement. this is supposed to be a truce of the vietnam war. the north immediately explodes it. the committee is now secretary of state in the fall of 1973. kissinger was a think a little embarrassed, too. >> guest: unix abortion ban and the future for other. >> guest: and made the nobel peace prize at work so hard for peace with honor as he called it

in the united states in north vietnam. but kissinger gets it and refuses the prius, which is an insult in a way. kissinger doesn't go to collect it and in 1975, with saigon falls in the treaty is nothing, he tries to return the prize, a diploma and the money and the norwegians and oslo tell them essentially the nobel peace prize is not returnable. you earned it for what she did then. this is not contingent on future success. you win it when you went up for work he birdied to an kissinger says in his memoirs that he would've rather won the nobel peace prize for diplomacy in the middle east that he was proud of. the wednesday nobel peace prize in 1986 telegrams. we still doing telegrams and?

confess i was not proud of my own prize. i am proud of yours. >> guest: it created an uproar, particularly the kissinger path of it. posted tom lehrer says that a cease to be possible. actually when henry kissinger won the nobel peace prize. i think it's far more shocking that the envoy of the totalitarian did teeter should won the nobel peace prize, but the program is attached to the american secretary of state, the foreign minister of the democracy regarded as a bit weird. >> guest: was interesting about that price, to defend one send is defensible because it views more closely to the actual parameters novell laid out that many of the others in the preceding year at a time line after years in which vietnam had wrote the world and relations that there is real hope.

but of course if if you also go on to point out, just a few years later, after the fall of saigon, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people die in the non. it goes to a different kind of peace, where there is a unified vietnam, but it's not peaceful at all. almost everybody can see alike and that price. >> host: the late general and diplomat and cia men say i was in college and graduate school i think. he says for 12 years in vietnam, there was terrible for he said. bombs rained down on every city, town, village and south vietnam and no one budged. no one budged during the time. it took the coming of the piece a few of them in the wrong kind of peace to send six or 700,000 out into the south china sea on

this avoid a retired to risk piracy and drowning and it took peace to do that he said. and i remember, that concentrated my mind today when i heard that, that it used to send this almost a million into the south china sea, fleeing in terror. what kind of pieces that? fatness worries. >> host: one of the interesting things that price does is provoke thoughts about peace and what we think of peace and overtime in some cases is that when did, is still debated and argued about it. >> host: the 70s was a busy year for the price, so there's a couple other years to mention. in 75 -- >> guest: a great act. leading the soviet aggression, whatever you prefer, a great

physicist he threw away his glorious career at the top of the russian scientific key to speak up for human rights freedom and dignity and the norwegian committee gives them the price in 1975. the soviet communists and lasted -- the soviet communists in paris from 1917 to 1991 and of course there's a great many curious on this. this begins, prisoners of conscience, activists of different kinds and all over the communist world soviet certainly. and there's only two awards given by the norwegian to people of the anti-soviet cause. sokolow in 1975 and oracle one set in teen 83. those are the only two awards.

there were two anti-apartheid awards. but the award to a lesser or would the were very important and had an effect. >> host: is interesting too because of that craft ones stands out as one of the shining prices. they also reflect the content as a view of what we mean by peace because the same way off yet does they are not related to her fraternity between nations they are prisoners of conscience for the term, simply further moral stands and their forcefulness and views which is a popular way to be the peace prize, but it's different but the nobel might've

received. >> guest: yes, i wonder for what they would've thought. ask myself what the peace prize should be. i think the committee should generally follow the well, but that rules out an at best prices to like the ones the period and he told me an interview without the nobel peace prize, his solitary cause of will in could never have succeeded. he put it there is no wind and the sales and that's what we would peace prize there was wind in our sails. >> host: they are very aware that when they sit down to vote and oslo, the peace prize is a great time and every person can really impact events. >> guest: it can be a weapon. i learned something from about robert kagan wrote about nicaragua called a twilight struggle. the norwegian committee in 1887 nobel peace prize to oster arias, president of costa rica

and they told him privately, we are giving you the sort to use as a weapon against reagan because they are in disagreement about central america and arias told bob kagan reagan was responsible for my prize. so this can be annoyed with tyler. some people think that it gave its freedom, its independence. has that brought down the dictatorship? now, but on sushi is well known. >> host: it argues that the prize to 21 years later seems to be opening up, but still benefiting from. >> guest: same with the dalai lama i would say, who receives the nobel peace prize in 1989.

but it's not important that? >> guest: not much, but people know the cause. people know the dalai lama personally in the nobel peace prize is not solely responsible for that, but it is hoped i'm sure. >> guest: it got under the skin of the chinese in state care in the aftermath. >> host: we could talk for hours, but i want to go a little bit to the last decade because interestingly some of the most controversial nobels, into a there's the book, the definition of peace changes again over the last 10 years as some of the price is. i'm thinking of al gore's price particularly. talk about the last decades with the nobels because you spent a lot of time. we can save barack obama can talk about the bush years.

>> guest: what a wake-up? 2001, right after 9/11, the war was announced in october. the price goes to the united nations and then secretary general sophie on that. as you notice, centennial of the nobel prize 1901 until 2001 was not for the nobel committee to honor the u.n. but they're also saying they were admonishing the american administration in this new war against terror toshiko country dare go it alone. that was a message of the peace prize. i thank the chairman -- you know that? >> guest: he is pretty explicit in his presentation speech that he gave at the prize ceremony. >> guest: he was very explicit the next year when the price goes to jimmy carter. and when the chairman announced the price to carter, he says this prize is intended not just as a personal word from mr. carter, but as a kick in the league to the american

administration and all who follow that line in a kick in the wake is an expression that we learned of the norwegian safe saneslap in the face. so that was carter 2003, carrying a body coming fiorini human rights. one environmentalist. 2005. just go will get back with al gore, but environmental, the first environmentalists. >> guest: controversial and creamy environmentalism as we see a controversial for someone. environmental is somewhat the rise. not that i was also honored. i don't believe there ever been a black woman. and the nobels chairman said this is meant to honor the women of africa in general as well. but i thought it was a very interesting figure. she was a political dissident.

a woman formidable woman, a woman of talent. she came over to the united states to study in the same program as barack obama senior from kenya. that's right. and there's another quasi-environmental nobels. what do you do with 19th of the what the great economists? in his 1949 award to john voight award who was the first leader of the fao, the agricultural organization. but maybe 2004 was the first explicitly green and the contemporary sense toward. 05, national atomic energy agency and then director mohamed alper of a, people wonder, is this another kick in the late? it was, seems pretty clear. she 2006 the homogeneous as the bangladeshi micro lender.

how is this off the beaten path by the nobel peace prize? >> host: that was one of the things president clinton lobbied very hard for. eat a lot of institutional support. >> guest: he was always advocating the peace prize. i think the nobels chairman does, now bill clinton can get off our back. we've done it. by the way, clinton is one of the few top democrats not to be nobel peace award. to give it to carter, gore and obama. do you go. trying to think if relatives have won the peace prize. i don't think so. i'll have to go back. >> host: well, not in sherry is used to call it. >> guest: she went to peace prizes, first with her husband. >> host: i'm trying to think, part of the founding the one and

a widow -- >> guest: housing of alvin mirabelle, one of the first economic price is. bunch worked under the mere dollars and the project but he's a young scholar. >> guest: go on to al gore because that's definitely one of the most controversial. >> host: that is a side piece of trivia. the subtitle of my book is the history of the world's most famous and controversial prize and a thing pretty clearly it's the most controversial prize. but this is the most famous. that may be a may be effective/because it could be tied with there may be surpassed by the oscar. i'm not sure how you measure this on a worldwide basis with some global gallop to be able to

tell us. one man and one year, 2007 wins both awards. that was al gore. the amazing thing almost assuredly will never happen again. i say if you're going to lose the presidency in such a hard way, as some compensation to win the world and argue with the two most famous prizes in a single year. he says essentially that at the nobel peace prize has, as a bomb following the extraordinary presidential episode in 2000. ps come the global warming campaign was at its apogee in 2007. i think it looked a little less good actor with conjugate and all that and they might have been lucky to win when they won. but when it they did. in 2007. >> host: d. you think in the history of the nobels, when you look at some of the controversial is with president obama and just a minute, but do you think that there's been a real shift in how they think of

the peace prize the not so in the last decade versus the first hundred years? or are such -- are some of these disorders within the tradition of the price going back and forth? >> guest: de son evolution. i think the norwegian bell committee said it to a certain trendiness as vulnerable to fashion, what is hot now, what is cool now. a global warming was very cool, no joke intended in 2007. and the 2008 awards is more traditional, given to a troubleshooter. a u.n. diplomat named ahtisaari. but some people said the committee should be where celebrity wars, celebrity selections. there's been a number of celebrities and outflows in recent years with obama being maybe the biggest. the committee likes to say this many paths to peace and so it's been giving to diplomats and get

into humanitarian, mother teresa, micro-lenders, global warming campaigners. >> host: arafat. >> guest: they almost always have a case. i think that global warming award, from reading my view of the intergovernmental climate change, the work is probably a little far afield from the nobel peace prize except in the department that i'm not sure is defensible, but it's their award. the five norwegians on the committee determined the award and the rest of us are just that tatars to pick at it. >> host: what did you wear about the obama prize and the person doing the boat? >> guest: i'll tell you something on the boat that is directly -- it's a little bleak in the book. barack obama was announced, some in norway carlina white a kid

they given the price? barak obama is now in a dogfight. maybe that's not the right word given recent events, but in 2009 he was a rock star hates coming you know, to create a standard feature of the globe. you know why they give the award? they just wanted to come the oslo. they had this bottle to give them he's the world's great rockstar come the biggest celebrity, the number one figure. i believe brings you as president, president obama to our remote icy little capital? the committee just wanted to bask in its glory and the committee chairman could boost an inherent to have obama as the winner. so i hear this, this one fellow say this. i think to myself, that's ridiculous nonsense. i hear from a second region at the ninth to may 15th and the

25th and then i discovered that whether it is true not, everyone thinks it. i don't know. i think that obama is a person after they know bijan own heart. if you have a share in worldview. a few of them as a philosophical soulmate, a social democrat. george w. bush was a president out of their nightmares. barack obama was safe president out of their fondest dreams. the nobel committee could design out of scratch of eternal at work obama. so it's a bit of a natural and as a way of saying, in a way to the same dingdong the witch is dead. sabra and george w. bush is no longer the oval office. there's this wonderful new guy. we are placing a new day. >> host: he comes out as she recounted the episode is maybe a little embarrassed about the whole thing?

>> guest: he seems so to me. denis? on a first came out of the house. he said something like this has been an interesting morning. he handled it very graciously. i think he was put in awkward spot. part of it was an awkward position. and throughout his visit to oslo and accepting of the prize, he was -- he tried hard, but actually in his speech he hearkened back a bit more perhaps than people expect to do some of that. >> 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 when is a war that is winding down and then he defended the afghan war quite strongly. and he also said that the pieces security of your have been supported by the blood of the american soldier, things like

that. george marshall like things. as one of his more hawkish addresses. >> host: well, we are coming close to the end, so i want to ask you in the biggest sense, as the peace prize a good idea? as you come away from the book thinking the peace prize make sense, asked the road for his flies or if it went away tomorrow? >> guest: you picture thinker an important question is when i forced myself to answer in the afterword of my book. i voted to readers to say whether i thought the peace prize is worth while. i thought there was enough information to allow readers to make up their minds. i gave my opinion now and then, but also i hope enough back so people can make up their own minds. you may remember this story. i was in the beacon sculpture park in oslo in buying a book from a vendor and because that kind of my reporter's hat on, guess what do you think the nobel peace prize?

he first answered as a norwegian citizen. he said they put doorway on the mat. he said they often don't agree with decisions of the committee, but i think it's probably good to have one price for peace in so many other prices for their things. and i agree. genuine peace is a wonderful thing. and if someone can affect between nations as someone deserves a price, even $1.5 million, the dishes this question of what is peace and who deserves to be crowned the champion of peace? not just the champion of peace, but the world's foremost? we offer an opinion from someone has to decide. you and i might think we can do better, but as the british safe in the gift of the site for weekends. >> guest: you are very generous about the process because it seems clear even when you disagree strongly with the choice, you seem to respect the process in the fact that discussion is going on it for

years, even sometimes it goes up the rails. >> host: >> guest: i think sometimes it's worthwhile. whether to continue it or ditch it. i may regret this later. i would continue it. >> host: visit came on with the peace prize with a guy at a game i would of light, but i just want to finish by asking you, when you look out there of what you learned in the prize in the world out there, who would be to peace prize winner or should we. >> guest: he may have to wait a while because they've given it to the american president bryce l.a., so they have to be a decent interval. that's right. it may be wonderful or were given to some cuban figures,

some democracy activists or freedom activists, prisoner conference. i think it will be a cold day, you know where one the committee gives the nobel peace prize to cuban freedom figure. the great cuban dissidents, armando valladares, the author of against all hope, sometimes remarked to me with some justifiable bitterness as the cuban tater ship were ribbing is set of left-wing boot of one to retrieve nobel prizes already. i think it's true and i think the nobel peace prize to a cuban freedom figure would rock that tater shape. a little island gators showed in the late 1950s. the nobel peace prize is a very big deal they are that could get to the ladies in white and institutions these women have t