some of the say, well, justinian died. there was a great plague that wiped out a million byzantium's. flavius belisarius ended up in poverty and blind. a lot of that land was either lost to these as coughs, the lombards, or the rise of islam. but what it did, it provided a critical question around byzantium because lo and behold where most people thought that the greek speakers in the west would fall of around 600 a.d., they lasted 900 more years and did not fall to that black tuesday, 1453, all because of the efforts of, i think, one man, flavius belisarius. the heyday of byzantium. when the great church was built by justinian. there was the great blues and greens, rivalries in the hippodrome. he was a man of his time. the third, i thought, was a modern kind of counterpart, and that did not want to write about people i have before, but in one case i made an exception, and that was william tecumseh sherman in the civil war. most of your member gettysburg and vicksburg, july 4th 2 1/5, and six of 1863. we all say, well, tha

without belisarius, the emperor justinian would not have recovered much of the western part of the byzantine roman empire. i don't think there was a union general alive who could have taken atlanta at the cost that we took it, very small cost compared to what was going on. i don't know anybody who could have done what matthew ridgway -- and i wish i could say that there were american generals that could have done what patraeus did. >> military historian talks about five generals that he says singlehandedly reverse the direction of the war to their countries favor. saturday at 10:00 p.m. eastern, part of book tv this weekend on c-span2. >> at this discussion from the new york ideas festival, panelists discuss online education and the increasing involvement of brick and mortar colleges. in new york ideas festival was organized by "atlantic" magazine and the aspen institute. this was 20 minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> thank you all very much. these are two of my heroes. let's give them a round of applause. [applause] and now, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at m