pearlstine. >> as a policy matter, which is how i understand your question, i think the preference of article 3 court, you get all the tactical benefit of a successful -- almost always successful prosecution without any of the strategic downside of using a forum that is still perceived and hopefully the new commissions will be better but generally the military commission forum is still perceived as a secondary justice. there's a tremendous amount of work that has to come before the perception and reality. i think we're on the right track now. but in the meantime, there is no powerful tool for the long-term detention of terror suspects than prosecution in article 3 court. >> mr. edney? >> well, it's hard for me to say that i have a policy preference because i'm used to giving legal advice on this question. i think my legal advice on it would be the following. if the premise is right that's been recognized by two administrations now that you need some military commission system for some members of al-qaeda to hold them to account for their crimes against the law of war, i think it's imp

. >> rick pearlstine, who lives in nixon land?> well, in my book we all live in nixonland but with obama it's a open question. we have two mutually different groups of americans who hate each other, left and right, red and blue that one side barely considers the other side american at all. and a big part of barack obama's appeal or at least his attempted appeal was to transcend just that sort of thinking now whether that will work or not is really the open question of his administration. i mean, he did, you know, pass a stimulus bill with zero republican votes and he's still being called a socialist. so, you know, it's a way to think about our history going forward. are we still living in that radically bifurcated mutual mode of recrimination that we saw that evolved with richard nixon in the 1960s. >> so did -- how did it evolve during richard nixon and was he partially responsible in your view? >> he was both -- he didn't create the wave but he surfed the wave. in the '60s social movements became patient and more violent, large

. >> rick pearlstine author of nixonland. what are you reading?re of narcissism which came out in 1979. it was a surprise bestseller even though it was a dense piece of argumentation. it's supposedly informed a speech carter gave in which he argued america was suffering this crisis of confidence, and i'm reading it because i'm doing research on the 1970s for my next book. >> what are you learning from it? >> a lot about psychoanalysis and abject relations theory and theorists like melanie klein. it's a dense and difficult work even though it's a bestseller i can't imagine too many people actually read it. >> for schedule information and descriptions of our programs, log onto booktv.org. you can click on the viewer input tab and email us, tell us what you're reading and what you think of our programs. >> paula kamen, who was irish chang? >> she was most known for her 1997 bestseller that was -- that was the book the rape of nanking and it did its best to raise awareness of the japanese awareness in world war ii. she wrote in great detail about the