Course businesses, and selfsociety, but Civil Society but the ones that really took advantage, early authors of many opportunities created by brokennizations their criminals and that led me to start taking a deeper look at the way in which criminal networks became global and how nigerian criminal organizations were working in thailand and russians were operating in manhattan, and how spanish organizations were operating colombia and vice versa. When i started looking at that, i discovered that there was a lot of anxiety and opinion but wasnt really much research. Except Louise Shelleys pioneering work. She started working on this subject when no one was paying attention it to. Her first book is in the early 1980s, crime and modernization, and after that she has had a string of books that have really framed the conversation. Its really impossible to have a conversation, a research, with what is happening to global crime and how intertwined with governments and terrorists and business, and even Civil Society, without reference to Louise Shelleys pioneering work. She is now professor at the school of government policy, government, and international affairs, at george mason university. She founded and directed terrorism, transnational crime and corruption center, t. R. A. C. , which is a characteristic way in which she approaches her research. She is very empirically ore yep oriented. The problem with criminal networks is those who dont know talk, and those who dont know talk. And thats not the case we Louise Shelley and her teams work. They have a propensity for empirical research, for going out in the field, and in this subject, going out on the field very often is quite dangerous. She has won and earned many awards. She is the recipient of a National Endowment of the humanities, cannon institute, full bright fellowships and grants to study the subject. The author of ten books of this latest one. She will give us a brief introduction to the main messages and the main conclusions of dirty entanglements and then we are lucky of the may associate who specializes in india. But takes a broad view of these trends and has some very interesting insights about how some of the Global Trends that Louise Shelley documents and analyzes, have very concrete manifestations in the indian case and in more broadly in developing countries. So, with this i will invite miss shelley to give her presentation of the book and then well have an openended conversation where i hope you can also participate. Again, thank you very much for being with us. Louise. Thank you for the incredibly generous introduction, and i see in the audience some of what i call tracksters, people who are part of our intellectual community who have gone off, as you said to dangerous places and done cuttingedge research. At the moment, the topic of conversation in the United States, the front page of the newspapers, the news, is isis. But a year ago at this time, nobody was thinking about isis. But i finished this book dirty entanglements last november, and one of my conclusions in the book was that syria would be a safe haven and an incubator for terrorism. So what was it in the analysis of dirty entang. Ments that made me so concerned about the threats we faced out of syria . There were five elements that i identified in the book. The potent si of the combined elements of the entanglement, corruption, crime, and terrorism and these three elements, which existed in syria, exist in mali, exist in other places in the world, have a much more chaotic and destabilizing effect than what we tend to focus on in the world which is, at the moment, the relationship of terrorism and crime, or as the carnegie is focusing on now, the relationship of terrorism and instability and corruption. Secondly, the enormous Financial Success of nonstate actors. Has written about in his book, an illicit one has seen the enormous rise of nonstate actors and their roles in the economy, and were dealing now with isis, which is the richest terrorist organization that has ever existed, and that brings us to the third point of dirty entanglements, the increasing economic role of criminals and terrorists as employers and participants in the local and global economy. Isis has the money to keep individuals on payrolls to round a patronage system and participate in oil sales through the Global Economic system. The fourth point is the del tierous impact of crime on terrorism, on communities and political order, and what were looking at in this region and which isis is operating, is detroy political or, destroy communities and a criminality through its kidnappings, trafficking of women, its brutality, its destroying communities that could stand up to it. And the fifth point is the incapacity of states and multinational actors to successfully challenge transnational crime and terrorists. We are not being very successful in countering the role of nonstate actors because our political, economic order is focused on state actors and the issues of the 20th century or earlier, while were dealing with 21st century challenges. When i came up with this title of dirty entanglements its not just that entanglements is a catchy word. According to the principles of physics, when you have a process in Quantum Mechanics of particles being entangled, they influence each other even when theyre apart, even across long distances. And that is what were seeing with this phenomenon in the real world of dirty entanglements, that once these processes, the corruption, crime, and terrorism, interact, they are not confined to a single space but have an influence that extends much more globally. We see all of this with isis. Todays frontpain story in the Washington Post is of gangster who snatched a syrian rebel fighter and were to deliver him to isis. With isis huge financial resources, they could pay hundreds of millions hundreds of thousands to the gangsters, and in this corrupt environment, in which there is no border security, the gangsters, isis, could exert their influence. So there we are with the dirty entanglements on the front page of the Washington Post. Look at the lead article today in the New York Times. Its talking about the large number of youth who are leaving from tunisia to be fighters in for isis. What we have in tunisia, which was one of the key places in the arab spring, is a corrupt environment in which there is little hope for youth and their future. And that is one of the key factors that i talk about in dirty entang. Ments, that youth are driven often to transnational crime or to terrorist organizations because of an ansons of employment or an enormous frustration with their absence of futures in their society. So, all of these factors that were looking at, that were identified in the book, are key elements of why isis is such a successful organization. Its Financial Success started with seed money from the gulf, elicit trade in cigarettes, and such bread and butter crimes of terrorists as extortion, robbery, smuggling. And their economic role is they provide employment, they deal in trade, and theres not been a very successful challenge to their activity. A military approach, as im going to say later, is not cannot be successful alone when an organization is imbedded in the community and provides employment and services to those under its control. So thats what the book says that led to my conclusion that we would see a major threat out of syria. What also does this book suggest that are outside the common wisdom . The first point is that were all part of the problem. What we are observing is not just going on in the developing world. Not just their problem that we are removed from. The beginning of the book starts with the attack on an oil field in algeria, in which workers come from all parts of the world to find employment, and to help make these oil fields function. And they are attacked by an al qaeda affiliate in north africa. But where did the money come from that funds the group . A lot of it, over 100 million, came out of kidnapping payments, and who paid these kidnapping payments . To get back their hostages . European countries, international corporations, through payments to recoup their hostages. But its not also the criminal activity that makes it all part of a dirty entanglement which were part of. This region in north africa, where the arab spring began, was region in which the leadership of north africa managed to drain the resources oust their country into the safe financial havens of the developed world. And its not the only region from which money has come that denies development and opportunities for youth. So, we are all part of the problem. Secondly, the book suggests that we need more than a military approach to terrorism, because unless we find a way to provide employment for the youth of the future, unless we find a way to deal with corruption, not just us but people in the region, that undermines the integrity and the respect of the society, we are going to be dealing with many more future isisss, this was said by 2009 president s of a north african country, and it is something that i concur with. Another point that i make in the first chapter is that all three elements for the dirty entanglements were present in the 9 11 attacks on the United States. The first chapter examines or reexamines the most deadly terrorist attack of the 2000s, and the crime and Terrorism Associated with each one of them. If you read the 9 11 commission report, you will find no references to corruption in the United States, even though the hijackers that boarded one of the airplanes did so with drivers licenses that were obtained through corruption in the dmv in northern virginia. And theres no reference to some of the crimes that helped facilitate this in terms of document fraud, visa fraud, and other activities. So, this is we have had this our country is not part of the dirty entanglement, we dont have corruption, we dent have crime, and its not linked to our terrorism and thats not true. Third, or fourth, i should say, we talk about terrorist financing but the second half of the become focuses in great depth on what i call the business of terrorism. That is, the terrorism function with many of the same principles and logic as legitimate businesses. After all, they need to diversify products, they seize targets of opportunity such as the oil fields that isis is going after, they seek to maximize profits and reduce risks. They seek to secure the best personnel they can, so that isis recruitment at the moment with the internet is targeting English Speakers that can help run their internet site. Many of them have criminal backgrounds that can help support the criminal activities that fund isis. So, were looking at something that is a business, and we have to understand how terrorism functions as a business and just as organized crime always used corruption as a central element of the business model, in fact our law on organized crime in the United States is called, rico, because were dealing with corrupt organizations, were dealing with terrorist organizations using corruption as a key tool of their activity. And therefore we need to put this problem of corruption front and center in so many different aspects of our analysis, from the analysis of the rationale for terrorism, what perpetuates it and what funds it. So, to leave some room for discussion and commentary, i want to conclude about what we can do about this problem. First of all, we need to stop stovepiping it and addressing just parts of it. In the United States, and internationally, we have groups working on corruption, we have groups working on terrorism, we have groups working on transnational crime, and these processes are linked and need to be understood and addressed in a cohesive fashion. Beyond that, were talking in the United States often about needing a whole of government approach to combating terrorism. But what we really need is a whole of society approach, because its not sufficient for government alone to be fighting this problem. As i mentioned earlier, elicit trade, lies at the core of the funding and business of terrorism. Yet how many publicprivate partnerships too we have with the corporate world that is monitoring this elicit trade and their commodities and is trying to develop solutions and to get government responses to this. Also, theres another role for the Business Community. A year ago, at this time i was in colombia, for the 15th 15th anniversary of transparency in colombia. Colombia is a country that has come back from the brink in relationship to terrorism. And part of this has been the Business Community has worked with Civil Society, has worked with government, to try and bring back a society so there is more respect for the rule of law. And so that is another central piece of this. But theres also another piece of this. Theres a role for citizens. Not just reading the newspaper or journalists writing and doing expos, which is very important. But because elicit trade counterfeit goos, cigarettes, familiar pharmaceuticals is an important part of this, and citizens need to understand there are costs sometimes of buying that cheaper commodity. And that cost may be that it is a counterfeit good that is going to fund terrorism. Therefore, there are no simple answers, and part of the is that we need to be also thinking about how were engaging eenormous youth and population growth of the developing World Without adequate employment, without hope for the future, and what does it take for a Development Strategy that can help create jobs and prevent some of this alienation were seeing and the absence of employment. There are many, many challenges, as i say in this book there are overarching problems were facing of the growth of mega cities, where governance is difficult. Climate change in the bay of bengal that is dis disdisplacing individuals and creating reef fujiis refugees, a rise in sectarian conflict we have seen for centuries in the world. There are many, many problems of which these dirty entang. Ments are consequences of them. But we need to think of this in an integrated fashion, and not aspirate phenomena but those that require a sophisticated, integrated approach of all elements of society, not just in the United States but the international and with we begin to do this we can begin to address the oten si oten si of the dirtle inning tanglements and if not i can see them spinning off as particles and having an unfortunately galvanizing force for economic and political and social instability in many more parts of the world. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much, professor shelley. We now the Carnegie Endowment have a central subject of the book is the role of corruption, how corruption is an enabler, facilitator and you cannot understand transnational crime without paying attention to the issue of corruption. You have been studying corruption in detail in india and elsewhere. What are your reactions to some of the points that professor shelley raises . Sure. Thanks everyone for coming. I first want to thank you for asking me to comment on this wonderful book. The book is about terrorism, organized crime, which i know nothing about, and only under generous definition do i know anything about corruption. So thank you for including me. I want to make a couple of points on the question you raised about the link with corruption. Before die that let me Say Something quickly about the book, which is that this is an incredible read. It was kind of overwhelming when i was reviewing the manuscript this week, how much material is packed into these pages. There were three things i really enjoyed about this. One is the meticulous research. By my counsel some of the chapters have more than 250footnotes, so tremendous amount of work which has gone into this on a wide range of subjects. The second is i think one of the moats important takeaways from the narrative that louise prepared is this idea that the nexus between criminality and terrorism is not just a problem that one can restrict to in poorly governed states and theres a. An interaction with the legitimate economy and wellfunctioning states, where that we need Pay Attention to and as you rightly said, theres a tendency sometimes for those in the west to think this is a problem which doesnt involve our system. And you make a very persuasive case it does, whether its our Financial System or Information Technology systems and so on. The second the third thing i liked about the book is her focus on, as she put it, the business of terrorism. That she provides a kind of Industrial Organization of terrorism, if you think of it as an economist, and it reminded me of the fabulous study that of the sicilian mafia, and talk beside the way way in which its structured and tries to integrate its addition to take advantage of certain business opportunities. So, congratulations to you on all of that. Let me now throw out a couple of points, some of them these are questions about corruption. You make a strong case in the book, which i think seems totally right on the money, which is that corruption is both a facilitator as well as an underlying cause of both crime and terrorism. Struck me that its actually much more complicated than even that, because corruption also can impede the response to the crime in and terrorism we care about. So when you talk about the eight deadliest terrorist attacks in the 2000s, one of those was the attacks in mumbai, which many of us remember watch those horrific images of the hotel going up in flames. And i remember when i was interviewed, i was struck by in some of the investigative reports which came out of that, why the response of the Law Enforcement was so poor, part of it had to do because of corruption in the procurement processes for bulletproof vests, which actually werent bulletproof. And so it was a sham order for quality for vests that were not sufficient quality and Police Actually felt like they didnt want to put their own life at risk because they didnt have proper gear. Thats a new element of the story which makes this dirty entanglement even more complicated. The second is how we think about measurement of corruption. You make the point that when we get to definitions of corruption, things are quite squishy, which i agree. We tend to go with the standard definition of corruption, the abuse of Public Office for private gain and thats not always very helpful, and were stymied by the fact there is no definition, and theres no measure, and so we often end up relying on perceptions, which arent very useful. I think we have actually made some headway here, and its a matter of thinking outside of the box and scaling up some of these out of the box ways of thinking. Just to mention a few that academics have come up with in recent years. There is the famous measure looking at unpaid diplomatic parking tickets in new york city by diplomats at the u. N. Right and theres no enforcement. You never have to pay. Why is it the most corrupt countries end up racking up more tickets than everybody else. Right . So egypt has a lot of tickets they never pay. Sweden hayes very few tickets and the ones they get, the pay right away. The second is, actually physically measuring corruption in the ground. So theres been some very interesting work by economists who have gone around the world and looked at highways being build and roads being built, and taking engineer dug down to see what the quality of the road is. That being done in just a handful of countries but one could actually scale up what our agencies should be doing. There are lots of of caveats that apply 2001 sector, but its apply to one sector but its a perceptionbased sector. This last interesting measurement, the elicit trade in antiquities. Very interesting work looking at the amount of exports of antiquities from countries where those products derive, and the imports from the countries which are mainly in the woes. Those two dont often match up and you can look at the mismatch between exports countries and importing countries to figure out what the difference and is dig deeper into those. So i think there are number of interesting ways that we can track both corruption and crime incidents, but its just we havent gotten our act together, those of white house work with agencies agencies who could fund and support that kind of work. Let me make two final points. On the kind of, so what . What do we do . One reason on the one hand your book is quite depressing because a lot of these entapping. Ments are so entanglements are so complicated and one measure we fall back on is transparency, that if we shed sunlight, which we think is the best disinfect tenant to use the old phrase, we can bring this dirty entanglements into the open but its not always the pans see ya pan see ya we hope it will be. We look at Political Parties corruption in india, its not as if the common man or the common voter doesnt have information about the corrupt or elicit activities of this politicians. In many cases theyre voting for them or supporting them precisely on those grounds. So, in other words, its not an information failure which creating this suboptimal outcome. Its a governance failure to. He solution is much, much harder. So, i think we need to be careful about how much transparency is going to bet us in some of these cases. The final point is one about priorities. That the dirty entang. Ments bring in so many different sectors, attributes, issues. If i were a policymaker, thinking about how to tackle this, i would feel like i want to throw up my hands because i wouldnt know where to start. And i think there are two potential negative outcomes i see. One is that we may maybe overplay our hand and engage in threat inflation. So when pakistan really hit the news over the last ten years, a lot of attention on madras and how they can be conveyor belts for terrorism, but theres a lot of work to say thats been totally overblown, less than one percent of schools in pakistan are madras but they have been increasing over time and not been increasing in terms of the share of the overall education system, that both public and private have been moving at the same pace. So, are we at danger, at risk of overplaying our hand a little but by seeing all of these linkages . The second is an issue about mission creep. That if we justify attacking corruption or inefficiencies in procurement or in permitting or licensing, are we going to create more problems for ourselves . So, i was thinking about this, again coming back to the pakistan example, is we justify a lot of our civilian asince stance to pakistan on the basis of security objectives. Whether its nuclear weapons, terrorism, crime. But then we expect our civilian aid to help us deliver on some of the outcomes when we should be getting civilian aid on civilian outcomes. So if we go to the mat on everything say this has a security dim ming one could make the case that the world bank doing Business Indicators have a National Security dimension. Are we at risk maybe of misaligning what we want to get out of this and the way in which we talk about these in policy circles. So, those are just some thoughts and questions for you overall on the corruption front. But thank you so much for this opportunity. Great. Very good questions. Would you like to give it a shot to a quick answer about these things . I think to look at the dimensional aspect of corruption on the ground is needed but its just part of a larger issue that we need to be talking about, which is great with who has been such a presence in thinking about global issues financially. Because what were also looking at in terms of corruption is the Massive Movement of funds outside of many of these countries, just as before we came here we were talking about remittanceses and how much are actually going on. But we dont have an idea of how much resources, sometimes we do but not in its totality, of how much has left much of the developing world. And i think thats a very central element of corruption that deserves much more attention. Because its one of the things that is most undermining development while remittanceses may be helping promote them, were having a countervailing fours with money leaving and incredibly corrupt leadership in much of the world. Eyes and comments, please tell us who you are. Im from bangladesh and over many years im teaching in the madras and the islamic schools. I have a question. You stated about nonstate actors, they are the element we should always watch out for, and i agree with you on that one. But with the state actors aiding the nonstate actors. I gave you two examples. In mumbai who did the massacre came from pakistan, and what can the International Community do about that . I wrote about Osama Bin Laden has been living in an area in where surrounded by many military installses and the intelligence installations and you think nobody knew about that. So, the International Community in the country what we do not mention, in the middle east and african countries, they of the stake actors which are facilitating the nonstate actors and one of that things we really forget is its not only all bad money. It is also Charity Money which is allowed in islam, like two and a half percent you give every muslim as a charity in good faith, where the money goes we dont know. Can be 100 , and every islamic bank all over the world have ten percent fee for social responsibility. Where does the money go . We try to do research on this in our country and could not locate we could locate where 70 my goes buttoned that we couldnt locate where the money goes, so is it the thing i request you to comment upon. Thank you. Thank you. In come come press compressing my remarkses on this incredibly complex book i did not talk about the relationship between the state and nonstate actors, but that is certainly present. In fact, the example that you gave of the mumbai bomb examination the relationship between the state and the terrorists, is in the book, and there are many, many other examples of this. And thats part of what i think of in discussing this corruption, is its not just a financial corruption but its a corruption of the functions of the state, because in many of the societies, in parts of the world, it is not just the states cooperating with terrorists. Its the state cooperating or being coopted by transnational criminals, drug traffickers, and others. And that is one of the factors that is undermining the state and undermining the credibility of the state, with many people in the world. And i think there are many topics that need to be explored. I do mention in the book about the requirement of the of the leading muslims to contribute their contributions, but im not in a position to contribute to that research that youre doing but i think thats very important for many people to be understanding and following the money trail. En in. Would you like to address that . No, i think louise, let me ask you the following. Its quite obvious, i think you make a persuasive case in the become that terrorists fund their operations through their elicit activities, smuggling and all kinds of criminal activities. That terrorists get me money from elicit deals is obvious. What is less obvious is why should elicit traffickers that are in it not are in it for the money, as you yourself said, they are business people, and if you are running a business organization, you dont want to amplify your risk biz getting entangled with terrorists. You have enough having to play cat and mouse with the authorities and the police and the drug enforcement, Law Enforcement, and organizations. So why if you are running a criminal cartel, why would you get entangled with criminals . At that time would not be a very Smart Business decision. Well, thank you for bringing up this point because its part of what i discuss in the first part of the book, how the nature of crime and terrorism have changed, and why criminals and terrorists cooperate now more than they did in the past. In the days of the mafia, like you talked about in your reference to diego, the mafia grew along with the italian state after world war ii because it got contracts from the state. Didnt just make money doing Drug Trafficking and extortion. It got a lot of state contracts. And it was not in its interests to collaborate with terrorists. But now many of the transnational organizations, criminal organizations, are operating in states that dont really have the capacity to provide. The contracts, that have the capacity to control them, and so they are happy to engage with terrorists because its good for business. And terrorists that in the post cold war era have less support from states than in the past, have become muff much more dependent on criminal activity support their activity. Its very interesting if youre reading bios of foreign fighters who are joining isis, how many of them have criminal activities and criminal records in their past. So theres a convergence of these two phenomena, which is very much a change in the nature of the state, where transnational crime groups are based, and what is the state capacity because of corruption to deal with these organizations. Thank you. Sir . Hi. Thank you for the picture you drew on the business of terrorism. I would just like to address the matter of foreign fighters. Thats working today with isis, of course. They seem to not really fall under any category, like theyre not motivated by theyre not living under corrupt governments are et cetera. So i really have my question basically is some dont even have criminal records. My question is, what really motivates those people . Is it always ideaol in terms of globalizationof course always ideology or Something Else . Thank you. I think its a very complex issue and deserves more study. Part of it is that many of the youth, as i mentioned, some of them who are living in western europe, are youth who find themselves because some of them are children of immigrants, to be youth without futures. They dont find themselves having the same opportunity structures as people who are from nonimmigrant families and this is an enormous source of frustration to them. But as the article in the New York Times was talking about today, on tunisia, tunisia still, like many societies in north africa, has enormous problems of corruption, and that is galvanizing youth who are seeing, through propaganda, this Islamic State of isis is supposed to be less corrupt. And theres also some of the same element of what has galvanized Youth Engagement with terrorism before, is that they are seeking to resolve some inadequacies they have had in their personal lives, and this is what some of this extremely successful recruitment is based on. Is to fulfill some internal needs and that is why i talk about this, about marketing, youre not just recruiting anybody to do this video recoupement but individuals who know how to do this sort of psychological outreach. If there is [inaudible] like to come back to the definitional issue and see if either of you have Something Better than the standard one. But im interested in whether in your researching as you see the issues play out you think there are some ideal types of corruption, syndromes of corruption, Michael Johnston talks about the difference between the way they play out in an awer to tarean sew authoritarian society very one in which theres tribal or pluralistic competition and then you mentioned the democratic fortunately systems. Whether its important that we identify very different types in order to get at what the causal structure would be and the solutions, what may work in one type may not work so well in another type. Thank you. I think that a very important. I think that all corruption is not the same. But i think one of the very serious mistakes that we made in going into afghanistan was to perceive that corruption is normal in that society, and that people will then be tolerant of high levels of corruption in government administration. And i think that is an ignorance of how corruption operates. That there are, as you say in some societies, tribal traditions of exchange, relationships we may perceive as corrupt and may not be entered as corrupt there but in many parted of the world citizens perceive what is an excessive level of corruption, and theres some quotes i used in my book from reading pakistani and afghan thinkers talking about the excessive level of corruption that we did not understand that turned americans policies into failures because of our failure to understand rerepulsion against corruption. How do you define corruption so it capture thursday neonses. I think theres captures the nuances. Theres no one way. I think that i mean, the way others have thought about it is thinking about magnitude of costs versus cost versus grand verse petty corruption, or looking at whether or not its involving political actors versus people who are outside and want one point in your book, we fall to often on the def next which thinks about people which are only inside the state system as opposed to private actions, and also there is this interesting disjunction between corruption and criminality in some cases. So criminals who are operating in Many Political systems arent necessarily corrupt in the narrow sense, although they thrive on the corruption which is going on in their political system. So i havent come um with a silver bullet. I sort of think that one has to take an ad hoc approach because its very hard to find universal answer. One of the friends that is making things even more complicated is that we used to think that corrupt organizations and individuals will essentially influence government officials and take over agencies or bureaucratic structures, and essentially either force them or induce them through incentives to behave in a corrupt way. What were seeing in some places in the world today is an arrow moving the option direction and that is that governments are taking over criminal organizations, not to destroy them but to run them, and with that we have the emergence of what i have called elsewhere in the paper, mafia states, and that is governments that are in essence criminal organizations. Theres not that they have been taken over or influenced by criminal organizations, but they themselves, in their nature, have criminal activities as part of the fundamental part of their ways of working. And so if you add that to the mix, the definition of corruption that gets even more entangled. Any yes, please. I am wondering if there are any significant differences you might find between different types of corruption in terms of graft, taking opportunities to make a profit off finances [inaudible] compared to what might be different, taking money from criminal in order to facilitate criminal activity, and then variations in between where maybe people are taking money under coercion of threat of what might happen to their families and they perform an act in collusion with criminals but not bass they want to. I think all of these problems you have identified are things i cite and gave examples of. Theres just such enormous diversity to this, but i think its themes and variations but the consequences of all of these are both an undermining of civil life and an undermining of the though capacity society, because money is diverted from education and is diverted from investment, and as we are having an increasing youthful population in the world, there are not the resources to educate them, provide them opportunities, and all of these things work in conjunction with each other. We have been discussing a book called dirty entanglements corruption, time ask terrorism, by Louise Shelley. Thank you very much, louise, and thank you for very much for this very interesting conversation, and thank you all for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] up next we sit down with historian david and jean heidler who discuss the difficulties of writing about history and the importance of teaching it. Booktv visited the historians with the help of our cable