brian walsh, a senior writer for "time" magazine.story on how to timeproof a city and jeff is the director of columbia university's earth institute. jeff, to what extent can we link climate change to hurricane sandy? what would be the fairest way to describe it? >> one thing we can start with is the ocean level has risen and the earn seaboard by almost a foot during the past century, and that means that storm surges are all the more extreme. the flooding was made worse by that and the sea level keeps rising and it keeps rising because of the glaciers melting and the ice thinning and the risk of massive increase of ocean levels are very, very real. so that's one very clear part of human-induced long-term climate change during the past century. whether the particular storm, this extraordinary storm, a tropical storm hooking up to this arctic storm and creating such damage on a long swath, that the hurricanol hurricanolo thifrp thinking about it. >> clearly not. they're not tinking of how to stop it hour to be adaptive. we've not ben do

i'll talk to jeffrey sachs and "time" magazine's brian walsh. and why does the world's greatest democracy have such an antique, disorganized, irregular way of voting? i'll take a look. but first, here's my take. growing up in india in the 1960s and '70s i always thought of america as the future. it was the place where the newest technology, the best gadgets, the latest fads seemed to originate. seemingly exotic political causes, women's liberation, gay rights, ageism, always seemed to get their start on the streets of the united states or in the courts and legislatures. for me tuesday's election brought back that sense of america as the future. the presidential race has been discussed as one that was about nothing, with no message or mandate, but i don't think that's true. put aside the re-election of barack obama and consider what else happened this week. three states voted to legalize same-sex marriage, which is the civil rights cause of our times. one day we will look back and wonder how people could have been so willing to deny equal treatme

that is the focus of "time" magazine's cover story, lessons from sandy written by senior editor brian walshis point. if you don't pay now you'll pay later. >> absolutely. we can see now we know the devastation from sandy will be in the billions of dollars. if you prepare now, you know, hopefully we'll head off some future storms like this in the coming days. >> but you say that we still depend on 20th century technology to power 21st century economy. what does that mean. >> that's referring to the electrical grid. we saw what 8 million people who lost power. we have a system that isn't ready for this kind of a disaster. you have a grid that can go down easily. even smaller events like halloween's storm last year. we have a system that's like the internet, more flexible, more resilient you can get it back online faster. >> people can tweet but still couldn't use internet or cell phones. >> exactly. the signature moment of the storm people tweeting that they had lost power which shows that very clearly. >> what are the big lessons back to the cover story, a lesson from the storm that makes a

and brian walsh who wrote the story talks about a number of them.astlines in a way that is probably irresponsible given the fact that the second point that due to climate change the oceans have risen, the air temperature is warmer, all of which makes storms like this more likely. andrew cuomo said quite eloquently yesterday, what we've seen in the last few years is once a hundred year events are occurring every few years. our point is we have to change the way we live to accommodate these new events. we can't build in the same places we have always built. what we've seen in new york as you see 50-year or 100-year-old transportation infrastructure which is still not back up. we have our electric grid, which is, again, also in the last century. so there are so many parts of america where our infrastructure is way, way behind the times. >> the article "lessons from the storm." it's the cover for "time" magazine readers in the northeast. you have separate covers for people elsewhere in the country on the upcoming election. rick stengel joining us as he

lessons from the storm by our environmental writer, brian walsh, which actually asserts -- and i knowg to say -- that there were aspects of the storm that were manmade in the sense that we're building the wrong way, our electrical grid is old-fashioned. our transportation infrastructure is from the last century. and there are things that we need to do about it. the rest of the country gets a political cover. the case for romney, the case for obama by two -- there it is -- by two different writers. it's a 50/50 run where half get it both for obama on the half and half for romney. there you go. a fantastic switch. e.j. dionne wrote about the president and rich lowrie from "national review" wrote the case for romney. >> so this is "time" magazine being nimble. >> we're very nimble. we're reacting to this once-in-a-century storm that seems to now happen every couple of years that has affected all of us. and i think, again, for that, i'm quite keen on figuring out what it is that we need to do. and there are things that we're just not prepared for. and the u.s. is, you know, 20, 30 in the

killing kennedy, the author of the end of men, gerald walsh, the author of what's the matter with white people >>> callamore from booktv college series. brian vandaemark talks about american sheiks, beirut and its founding families. this is recorded at the united states naval academy. it's about ten minutes. on your screen now is brian vandeemark.j) his most recent american sheiks) to families, for generations an) the story of america's influence in the middle east. professor, who was daniel? >> he was the founder of what became the university of beirut. >> how did he go about doing that? >> a lot of american on to the real spirit. he also had the financial backing. the copper conglomerate that made the family wealthy in the 19th century. >> what was reverend list's goal in founding the american university in beirut? >> his initial view differed from what became his life's work. he arrived in the middle east in the 1850's and determined to convert muslims to christianity and very quickly realized that wasn't going to happen and it the way to make a connection was not to convert them but to educate them and to include their lives intangible