The World S Most Prestigious Prize

The World's Most Prestigious Prize: The Inside Story of the Nobel Peace Prize is a fascinating, insider account of the Nobel peace prize. Drawing on unprecedented access to the Norwegian Nobel Institute's vast archive, it offers a gripping account of the founding of the prize, as well as its highs and lows, triumphs and disasters, over the last one-hundred-and-twenty years. But more than that, the book also draws on the author's unique insight during his twenty-five years as Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute and Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. It reveals the real story of all the laureates of that period - some of them among the most controversial in the history of the prize (Gorbachev, Arafat, Peres and Rabin, Mandela and De Klerk, Obama, and Liu Xiaobo) - and exactly why they came to receive the prize. Despite all that has been written about the Nobel Peace Prize, this is the first-ever account written by a prominent insider in the Nobel system.

The World's Most Prestigious Prize: The Inside Story of the Nobel Peace Prize is a fascinating, insider account of the Nobel peace prize. Drawing on unprecedented access to the Norwegian Nobel Institute's vast archive, it offers a gripping account of the founding of the prize, as well as its highs and lows, triumphs and disasters, over the last one-hundred-and-twenty years. But more than that, the book also draws on the author's unique insight during his twenty-five years as Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute and Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. It reveals the real story of all the laureates of that period - some of them among the most controversial in the history of the prize (Gorbachev, Arafat, Peres and Rabin, Mandela and De Klerk, Obama, and Liu Xiaobo) - and exactly why they came to receive the prize. Despite all that has been written about the Nobel Peace Prize, this is the first-ever account written by a prominent insider in the Nobel system.

In this book, Jay Nordlinger gives a history of what the subtitle claims is the “world’s most famous and problematic award.” The Nobel Peace Prize, like the other Nobel prizes, began in 1901. So we have a neat, sweeping history of the 20th century, and about a decade beyond. The Nobel prize involves a first world war, a second world war, a cold war, a terror war, and more. It contends with many of the key issues of modern times, and of life itself. It also presents a parade of interesting people—some 120 laureates, not a dullard in the bunch. Some of these laureates have been historic statesmen, such as Roosevelt (Teddy) and Mandela. Some have been heroes or saints, such as Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa. Some belong in other categories—where would you place Arafat? Controversies also swirl around the awards to Kissinger, Gorbachev, Gore, and Obama, to name just a handful. Probably no figure in this book is more interesting than a non-laureate: Alfred Nobel, the Swedish scientist and entrepreneur who started the prizes. The book also takes up many a person who did not win the peace prize, but might have, or should have: Gandhi? Peace, They Say is enlightening and enriching, and, here and there, fun. It has its opinions, but it also provides what is necessary for readers to form their own opinions. What is peace, anyway? All these people who have been crowned “champions of peace,” and the world’s foremost—should they have been? Such is the stuff this book is made on.

I would like . . . to help dreamers, they find it hard to get on in life. -- Alfred Nobel

Jennifer Maiden’s poems are like verse essays, subjecting the political issues of our time, and the figures who dominate them, to a fierce scrutiny, while allowing the personal aspects of experience to be portrayed in the most delicate and imaginative ways. This is the quality of liquid nitrogen which gives the book its title – ‘the frozen suspension which is risky/ but also fecund and has beauty’ – it is a substance which permits the most intense and heated interactions, and at the same time, the survival of delicate organisms. In the cool medium of Maiden’s poetry Julia Gillard confronts her mentor Nye Bevan, Kevin Rudd shares a flight with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eleanor Roosevelt plays Woody Guthrie for Hillary Clinton. The poems focus on the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Breivik in Norway, dissidents in Beijing, the protests in Tahrir Square and Gillard’s way of governing, alongside tributes to friends and family, cats and dogs, birds and music. Few poets are as political as Maiden, and as intimate.