with salman rushdie, jill lepore, robert douglas-fairhurst and simon coleau. >> one of the things about dickens there is this extraordinary shelf of books which as we were saying, you can look find end else contemporary references in theem and as time has passed, the strength of that body of work, you know, has made him really, i think, the english novelist. >> rose: we continue tonight with the celebration of the lives of two men who helped us understand the world around us by what they wrote. one died this week, anthony shadid. the other died in 1870, charles dickens. both of them a celebration when we continue. funding for charlie rose was provided by the following:. >> from our studios in new york city, this is charlie captioning sponsored by rose communicions captioned by >> we begin this evening with a remembrance of anthony shadid, "the new york times" foreign correspondent dade thursday from an apparent asthma attack while on assignment in sirria. he was only 43 years old. this is what "new york times" executive editor jill abrahmson said of him. anthony died as he lived, determ

the music industry, as we have heard from celebrities, everyone from ar rooet a franklin, even salman rushdiendustry and the grammys must in some way acknowledge her contribution as well as her passing. >> absolutely. thank you so much. lola ogunnaike from the "today" show. i want today to ty. there's a lot of talk about how she was poised for a come back. what do you think? >> i definitely think a lot of people were looking for whitney houston to make a come back. in 2009, she put out an album that clive davis really had a hand in orchestrating with her, and it was the hope that record was going to put the troubles of her past behind her, and that she would go back to making hits and making fantastic music and that she would come back to the form that we all knew and loved. and that record sold about two and a half million copies. i think it was definitely seeming as if it was going to happen to get her back to the top. but unfortunately that never happened in the way any of us wanted or expected. >> why is that. you said it sold two and a half million. had a big hit off that album. >> you k

remember her at all but they were fascinated by the book and she said, she is going to be like salman rushdie if she is calling herself an infidel. she could get herself killed and was really just like someone out of the pages of her book were speaking. >> host: you got a sense of what it is like on the ground. did you get a sense of this tribal society that she is coming from? >> guest: well, little bit but this is in kenya and these are somalis who have migrated to kenya. the community she grew up in was in somali term somalia term sort of an upper-class. these are the people who left somalia and then form the basis of the rebel movement that eventually overthrew the somali dictator. her father was a leading politician, so they were people who are coming out of the tribal society into an urban society and trying to make that adjustment and that was a very difficult adjustment that her family went through while she was growing up in kenya. and ayaan hirsi ali has obviously been successful by both her brother and her sister suffered tragic fates. they were not able to make that john. >> host:

the iranians declared a fatwa on salman rushdie, and he had to go into hiding for more than a decadeis government and others continued fawning on the regime that issued the death sentence. the dutch film maker, van go, spoke out and was murdered, and the dissenters of hollywood were too busy congratulating themselves on their courage and brave ri in standing up to bush even to mention their poor, dead colleague in the weepy oscar montage of the year's deceased. to speak out against the islamists means to live in hiding and under armed security in the heart of the so-called free world. >> guest: yeah. which i think is disgraceful. and i think just to go back to that business of theo van goa who was murdered in the streets of the netherlands and a letter threatening similar death to ion heresyally was pinned to the poor guy's chest. the oscar ceremony that year, i forget what they were congratulating themselves on. i think george clooney had made a film about mccarthyism because, you know, for hollywood that remains the most significant event of the last five millennia, and they'll be