please help me welcome alvaro vargas llosa. [applause] >> thank you very much, ian, for that wonderful and generous presentation, and thank you to the cato institute for hosting this meeting and to alex for being so kind in helping put it together. so i've been asked why did i write this book, why was i interested in this topic. and, well, there are several reasons. perhaps one of them has to do with my, i guess, identity problem. i've been called a spaniard in peru, i've been called a -- [inaudible] in spain which is a pejorative term for south american. i've been called a pakistani in london where i was based for a while, and now i'm being called hispanic, in other words, spaniard. so i don't really know where i belong and who i am, but i guess it's probably a good enough reason to explore this important issue today. so let me tell you a little bit about what i do in this book. what i do is i take on all the different myths that i have seen over the years that are really driving this discussion and this debate including the c

and help our friends up on capitol hill pay attention to the points made today, especially read alvaro vargas' book which is on sale here at a discount for all of you interested. thank you all for coming, and please join me in thanking a great speakers today. [applause] >> there is a luncheon upstairs. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. >> the romance of the mob, those of you who are mafia boss, a certain degree it's romantic but the level of brutality to it that is just terrible, okay? you can never, as evident by what people say to me by coming into the computer, don't you get captured by this? don't you kind of lost into these guys are? the term moral captures what a federal prosecutor their use to describe when he saw it happen the length of vector. he we were a pinky ring, wear gold jewelry, every other word in so cabinet was an f-word because he says in the book i had to get with these guys. i had to convince the him to trt me. in fact, after a certain point, you begin to cross the line. sizer journalist, it's fascinating to i