Was seeing, what i was thinking. And so it began. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. This is booktv on cspan2. Television for serious readers. Heres our primetime lineup tonight, starting at 7 00 p. M. , we tower to charles kessler, and at 7 45, elin showwalter take her biograph of the a author the battle hymn of the rub. On afterwards at 9 00 p. M. Eastern, american join co founder steve case speculates on the future of the internet. Then at 10 00, najari receives an award given for a become on military history our International Affairs for his history on then 1947 partition of india. And we wrap up booktv in primetime at 11 00, with the marine corps universitys sebastian on fighting isis. That happens tonight on cspan2s booktv. [inaudible conversations] [applause] hello, everyone. Welcome. What a great crowd. Thank you all for coming out. On behalf of our owners and cav id like to welcome you to politics and prose. You cant hear . Before we get started can you all hear me in the book . Just a few housekeeping things. A good time to turn off or silence your cell phones. Also, after the event if you dont mind helping us by folding you chairs wed be grateful and we have microphones on the no, right here this evening. If you could step up with your question, that would be grate because we are recording this event. You can watch it in a few days on our youtube channel. Im very pleased to welcome Richmond Engel this evening to talk about miss book, and then all hell broke loose. Im guessing you recognize richard as the chief Foreign Correspondent for nbc news. Where he reports regularly from a variety of farflung places, mostly in the middle east, and much of the time with things exploding in the background. So were especially glad to have him here is in hopefully more received date environment, at sedate environment, at least for on hour or two. This is about his reporting in the middle east, including a stint in cairo where he went after graduating college, 2005 suitcases and 2,000 perspective we idea of becoming a Foreign Correspondent. In this book we learn about his education as a young reporter, how he went from picking up free lance work for video and print to wind upping reporting for major news network, chronicle can vaccines through the middle east which in one case led to his kidnapping in syria. He offers an analysis of the middle east in which i heard him say, ive never seen it work. He calls this a deft personal condition of where the idle east has been and where its headle. Before i ask you to help me welcome Richard Engel issue just want to the you that not surprisingly he has a plane to camp at the end of the event so were going to probably cut the q a a little short and try to move everyone through the signing line to get their book signed. So please help me welcome Richmond EngelRichard Engel. [applause] well, first of all, its an absolute pleasure to be here. I cant remember the last time ive seen so many people in a book store and thats encouraging on so many different levels. Buy this book, buy all the books, keep the industry going. So, as you just heard, this book is about the middle east. I moved to the middle east 20 years ago, graduated Stanford University in 1996, and the idea was that i had i was going to go to a place where i thought there would be a lot of news, the middle east seemed like a good choice, and i was going to start on my way, and i was going to become a great Foreign Correspondent, or at least a working Foreign Correspondent. So i moved to cairo, and i really looked at the map. I a had the map of the middle east in front of me and thought, where am i going to goo . Saddam husseins iraq, not too many options for a reporter there, syria, not much going on. Jerusalem, yes, lots going on but probably oversaturated market to cover the israelipalestinian conflict. I thought, egypt. Okay, and its egypt. Even if it doesnt work out, still in egypt, which is great. So, i packed up a couple of suitcases and took a little bit of money, some savings, and i arrived and i rented an apartment there, and i had an incredibly rich experience, people were very welcoming to me. They wanted me to convert to islam constantly. They would bring me to their homes and feed me things. I was never, ever alone, and while that can be tiresome after a while, it was a great way to become familiar with the culture and learn the language and in a matter of months i was having very incorrect but basic conversations in arabic, which i had no choice. Bus when you live in an apartment and every is broken and its a million degrees outside, you have to learn to talk to people. So i started reporting for local newspapers, and then for international radio, and then stringing pieces for newspapers, and really have been doing it ever since, and its been 20 years now. I still live in the region. Im very rarely back in the states. Im here a couple of times a year to see families and encourage you to boy this inexpensive, readable book, but im back in the states very infrequently, and ive been living there now for 20 years, and theres a thesis in this become, having looked at the region for this long and its a model. Like all theoretical modelits flawed. You could pick holes in it. You can find reasons why it doesnt work. But i like to think of it as a way to understand the middle east right now and the model i chose that the book is sort of based around is a at least in my mind, a row of houses. If you think of a row of rowhouses, old houses on the coast somewhere, and they look beautiful from the outside, and they look like theyve been there for forever, but theyre rotten inside. Nobody has taken care of them. Nobody is opening the windows. Nobody is putting in dehugh mid identifying apparatus. Its just crumbling, and the middle east when i arrived was a little like that. 20 years ago there was a structure place. The big men ran the region. The assad family, mubarak, gadhafi, saddam hussein, and it was established, it was locked in place. But like these old row houses, it was a lot of appearances, and on the inside it was tremendous rot, and the rot was ignorance, nepotism, corruption, religious tensions that were kept at bay by strongmen activities like those carried out by saddam hussein, and like in these old houses, you contain the rot, but if you dont open the windows and dont 0 open the doors and spend any money on it, you also make it worse. And that was the situation, very fragile paradigm, and you could put your finger through the wall. And instead the United States put its shoulder through the wall of iraq, and started a sequence of evened that were still really living and experiencing to this day. So, eight years of direct military action. Started to destroy this stat tuesday quo and unleash all ol the rot and these demons that had been pent up, and then the very soon to be eight years of the obama administration, we saw inconsistent policies. And they were supporting the revolution in egypt, and then days later not supporting it in bahrain and supporting the uprising militarily in libya, and then not supporting it in syria. So zigzagging through the middle east. And the combined effect of these two, of eight years of military action and very soon to be eight years of this kind odd zigzag, unleashed all of the rot and the old system as we knew it, the middle east i arrived to in cairo, is broken. And the middle east where i am today, ive never seen it worse. Its a period of chaos, and i think isis is the sort of physical embodiment of that chaos, and if you continue this model, you can just speculate on writ might go from here, and i think what were going to see next is a series of strong men reemerging, and i think egypt is the first example of that, and i think there will be more to come. And i think the people of the region are going to embrace this, but they should be very careful what they wish for because after period offed chaos, as europe has seep in this last century, when following chaos, when people embrace strong men and dictators and fascists, bad things can happen. I think thats what is coming. A tendency for strong men, and we will see how it goes, and i think our government and other governments around the world will probably reach out and embrace these leaders and it doesnt have to by a binary choice. Doesnt have to be chaos or dictators but after the chaos we are going to reach back and hope for dictators. And i hope one day if theres anymore this room who have some influence, maybe they can find a third path and guide the region to someplace where you have leadership and you have responsible governance but it doesnt have to be saddam husseins iraq. So, that this framework of the book. But i tell it through my eyes. Through people i know. I tell it through the place us ive lived and the, whichs i meet along the way, and the thesis i just argue i tell over 256 pages of anecdotes. So i hope that it is you get to follow along this journey that has been a 20year downoff arriving in the middle east, not really knowing what i landed into, trying to become a journalist, and then moving along in the process and then just watching all hell break loose. And it is broken loose, and you have to see how it goes. So with that preamble, aid love to take your questions. Anything specific level you have in mind. I was told to ask you to approach a microphone if you can. So, while youre doing that, ill just take this opportunity once again to say thank you very much for coming and for reading book that i wrote and other journalists and authors,. [applause] having been literally part of that world for almost two decades, when you arrive there those young men and women were born in the early 90s we look at an entire generation of young people in their 20s today what hope do you see for these people that have been part of this turmoil and what can be done globally to help them . The reason the. The reason i worry youre going to see strong men arise is because the new generation has lived for the last 15 years or so in a period of terrible strife. Theyve been living this sunnishia conflict, been living they arabpersian conflict, the kurdishturkish conflict, mitchell tease conflicts win cities. Theyve been living in conflict. And it would be very easier someone who comes along and say, you remember what its like. Give me all your rights. And ill make all of that go away. And theres another thing that is interesting. As just is tricky. We could do a whole week discussing turkey. Its one of the most interesting conflicts or dynamics as the strawmen are trying to reemerge you are also seeing the old empires because when there is a breakdown of order, lots of people try to make way. Russia is striking to reestablish the influenzae and decided the way to do that is through keeping an alliance with bush are all a solid and making alliance with kurdish groups. Russia wants to spread its wings and the same way theyve been called. He wants to reestablish the influence and he has been trying to do that but with mixed success. Hes been blamed for reigniting the war when the Peace Process was going quite well. So, his goal of establishing a new world order in the middle east out of the chaos of the old ottoman world i think that he and a few others around him were still trying to do that but he picked a big fight when he picked a fight with russia. So far the middle east isnt lining up to stand behind him and rejoin the influence, so hes still pushing the project but with limited success. Looking back there is no way that we are going to get back to this. But solidarity. [laughter] once again, youve got your bulletproof vest. It its the jacket itself. Much comes from the frontline watching the interviews and nightly news. I want to pick your brain. We have lost much of our men and resources by going into iraq and afghanistato iraq andafghanistat is done, so where im going to go you may not want me to go. We entered after 9 11. They were hit in the plains and then it comes dow down at 5 20 n the afternoon. Do you have any kind of information for us about the 9 11 attacks . Though, i havent really studied the aftermath of the attacks but the answers you seem to be looking for, i am not the person that has those. In the middle east i wasnt in new york that day or washington on that day, i wasnt in the midwest. So, keep asking that question i just dont have anything more to add to the debate. [inaudible] [laughter] yes, i do. Thank you very much. Okay. I honestly didnt know your name before this weekend and ive learned ani havelearned and i re kidnapping of the nbc news team and in april of last year it was effectively retracting the story that tells the shape do you recognize this as a false flag of operational being a group wants to make another group look bad and so they will disguise themselves as the group in the case. [inaudible] if so are you interested in what role our own government has with john mccain and Lindsey Graham and the two senators who were pushing at this time to arm the army was the army responsible for this kidnapping and rescue . Theres two questions. One is about just to make it a little bit more clear, three years ago or so i was with a team Close Friends and colleagues and unfortunately, we were kidnapped and we were held by a masked gunman who eluded us in back of the back of a truckd us from place to place. And while we were there the whole time, all of us including several speakers believe that these were regime loyalists and people who were militia and really give you to believe that by way they were acting and it seemed very credible. And we got out and we got out of this horrible experienc experiee and everybody on the team knew it. Then a couple of years later we got a tip and said there may be more there. These people that grabbed you you might want to look again at them so we spent about two months digging back in trying to find out who and where. And i do think that these people were probably in all likelihood it goes to the point of how complicated the situation is and remains where the loyalties are often not what they seem. I think that they were people that wanted a ransom, they were posing as regime loyalists so in case w we did get out they would know who they were. That was the first point. So i its kind of the hiding of identity it is a conspiracy with the u. S. Politics involved and Lindsey Graham and others i dont think so i think this was much more local. Thank you for being here. Im a current recorder and correspondent it seems much of the success in your career to the fact parachute in some way you were in their regions were not long before other reporters arrived. My question to you is if you were where would you go . [laughter] i would get out of the town. I would look at the world and this is what i tell other young journalists come to think about the world is going to look like in 20 years, so i took a gamble. What if the middle east have been a boring and i wouldnt be here right now. Nobody would be buying this book. If it was 1986 when i left i probably wouldnt have gone to the middle east. I would have gone to poland or moscow or somewhere else but it was 1996 and i was looking at the map and i was thinking the middle east is probably going to be the story of my generation so i would say to you go home, think about it for a couple of days. What is going to be the story the next 20 years a b. Its nott the middle east. Maybe its the environment so therefore you should go to a place you think the environment is going to be most impacted. Put your self in a place like the great Wayne Gretzky know where it is going to be and not where it is now. So, think about where the politics are going to be the next 20 years and then go there. So what you say may be africa . I think frankly the coalition of environment and urbanization are going to define the next generation of times. Im not sure if the next 20 years going to the middle east you may have missed it. In the last ten or 15 years there were two major american ground wars in the middle east, one of which didnt go particularly well. And hundreds of thousands of troops that were cycling through. Are you going to do better in the next ten years and gets more action in the middle east than that . Probably not. I doubt the 101st Airborne Division is ever going to be deployed to baghdad again in our lifetimes. I could be wrong. But i dont anticipate another iraq war. So, look at the map, think about all the different pieces and then figured out where you want to be. Maybe its africa, and maybe it is the virus and the other types of horrible mutations that are happening in a natur the naturee one of the planet. Maybe thats the story of the next 20 years. I dont know. But it is a fun experiment to think about anyway. [laughter] then once youve thought about it and come to this vision, moore helps. [laughter] i take that advice every day. I met you several years ago in afghanistan and i would like to say that im happy to be standing here in front of you stateside and we are both here safe. I appreciate your service and thank you. Well now i have to thank you for yours. My question relates to the strategic power. We generally go to the military anytime there is an International Crisis the military steps up or we look to the military. We did well in the economic power and we used it well with our diplomatic power with iran. What can we do better diplomatically to not engage foreign leaders that engage the people . Thank you for your service. He is in the valley or the providence which is one of the most dangerous but also beautiful parts of afghanistan and up there together into the vehicle broke down and we had to move the i wasnt there for that but i had lunch with you and you utilized thank you. We borrowed some equipment. [laughter] but i was the sand boy that was sitting there holding on to every word. [laughter] thank you. I hope that we returned it to you. The problem with america not just necessarily diplomacy that engagement a as you said is the u. S. Continues to retreat and continues to go deeper and deeper behind our diplomatic enclaves and often times its not the diplomats who are running the show. Its the Security Officers who determine who they can meet and when and for how long and thats a problem. We are losing contact. You cant just listen to peoples communications and read their email from behind the walls of a castle. You lose contact and the texture. I dont know why the United States doesnt have an effective cultural integration program. The former u. S. Consulate writet in the middle of the city is a soho house rented out for profit and nextdoor, there is an icon and Cultural Center that shows italian movies. You can come in, take a italian language classes and theres a french institutfrench institutes parties and festivals it seems like every night. Theres one from holland and the u. S. Doesnt do anything. We generally stay close behind these walls and have meetings that gets put online as they get leaked and things like that. So i think they need to try to engage more because staying in a castle doesnt serve our national interest. I dont know why we dont have a vigorous Cultural Outreach Program and american studies center. They dont really exist. We used to have them. We have to wait on line and you cant even approach it really and i think that does or outreach if somebody goes to istanbul for example in the Cultural Center and they will come and watch a couple of movies and have pizza night comes something simple like that. If you are a local kid from the neighborhood can actually change your impression of the country and if you do that every day i think it means something. Did lawrence of arabia float your career, the man, the myth, the movie how the legend. [laughter] yes. [laughter] when i moved out to the middle east i was a kid. I still sort of feel like a kid i moved out to the middle east and i wanted to do this when i was a young boy. I was 13yearsold. I was with my family and we were in morocco at the hotel that is a glamorous hotel and i was about 13 sitting on the steps waiting for my mother to come out. My mother always comes out well dressed and put herself together, jewelry and clothes and is from another era. I was waiting there in front of this grand hotel and there was a Horse Carriage and right in the center i had the International Herald tribune in my hand which unfortunately also doesnt exist anymore and my mother came down the steps in a cloud of perfume and said you should work there one day its based in paris. I said okay. There it is. I will be in paris. I will be in my office with my typewriter and i will write the next great novel and thats what i wanted to do so this wasnt just lawrence of arabia. It was the romantic ethos of being in an exotic place and doing something exotic. I still like the concept. And is your mother a fan of greta garbo clacks i will have to ask her. Thank you very much. But yes, there is a flyer if youre not having fun doing it. You spoke of strongman dictators coming out of some of these revolutionary situations. And another option might be the installation of a puppet regime. We go in and find ourselves in the soft and claiming to be bringing democracy to this area. Is there any realism and not in terms of country after country in this year yet or libya or any of them and how is that taking place . Theres two questions whether they are attempts to install the strongman will there be attempts by other governments or other powers to put in their own, absolutely. Will they succeed . Not sure. I am not sure that everyone that is proposed by the Regional Government or by his own people is going to survive. Some of them will get bumped off into some wont make it so it will be a work in progress. The other question is can there be democracy in the middle east. I hope so. People are people. I think that its going to be hard in this next period because they have such a reasoned traumatic experience i think they are going to be running away towards stability but can there be democracy of course. They are the same people we are. They dont want to live under this society. We cant build it for them then it adds a whole mother only year of rejection that makes it difficult. As someone that has been getting news from you for a long time and its not a very old age already im wondering where do you get your news from and are there any blogs or sites that are lesserknown but you might recommend . Youre not going to like the answer because there is no one place. You have to look at social media and read books and you have to read. The thing i tell people the most is read. I read a lot of books on the middle ages and the crusades. Its a sorif this sort of projee because a lot of what i do is religious studies. Its the middle ages and the crusades in a new place and time so the more you can read the more you can fill in the picture. I collect books and read a lot of bizarre and antiquated books but i find them interesting and illuminating. That would be the key thing. There isnt one that is the answer them or you can rea mored real books almost on any subject the more you will learn about the subject you want to know about a plugin for the buck all on the product. Someone that spent a little time i find your analysis realistic and you might say its the anatomy of revolution that is basically every time every revolution named after the dictatorship, and im wondering it seems like there is no little space. Therit will be hard to have some democratic reform where there isnt repression from the government and im wondering if maybe the emphasis should be more on there is no middle cla class. Education and middle class are the solutions. Over time you need solutions and unique people to have money in the pockets if youre desperate you dont have a love o lot of e and if you dont have knowledge because youve been deliberately miseducated by your government, you are easily manipulated and take whatever you are given. There are countries you see theres a possibility for that happening . Its a really interesting case right now. I went to see about the implementation. The deal that was recently agreed to there was an implementation a few days ago and that means that they certify the obligations of on working the process was already underway and i was talking to people who are very excited about the change. I met a young woman at the Stock Exchange thats not bigger than this room and its a couple of old pushbutton phones and this energetic stockbroker worker was running to work in the morning that excited she cant wait to get to work because she thinks the market is going to go through the roof and she is going to change so you have a lot of people like her. I met a lot of people in the market talking about how there would be tourists and banking and he would be able to put their goods online and serve them on ebay and all the things they had been denied th denied y were excited about entering the World Economic community but then you have the regime which has a vested interest in doesnt want to see things change. It wants to have sort of perestroika without grassroots, innovating without change and is that possible . Do you have half of the society betting that its impossible and saying okay open the door a little bit and youre not going to be able to close it again and then theres people saying we will open the door a little bit and make sure that it doesnt open and who blames . No idea. And that is one of the fascinating ideological and physical potential in the region right now. You said education and economics, Economic Opportunity is the answer. To create a more moderate society that would make democracy work. Thats Bernie Sanders message. [applause] i dont have to deal with any domestic politics, so i am not even going there. We have so many people that spend alspent all day long talkt this. Luckily im not one of them. I want to ask about the future betweefeature between ise moderate forces and if you believe that islam will become whether the moderates will try to help power the islamists. The short answer is yes they will. I think by isis is short for this world and is unpopular. And theres another within islam and like any virus, you have a cold sore inside all the time but when you are weak and broken down and stick it comes out and manifests itself and becomes contagious, to use that disgusting example. [laughter] but thats a little bit like isis. It is there and it has become contagious because the body around it is weak and eventually will become stronger and isis will recede into the darkness in the middle east if he will. There have been moments of fanaticism in all religious groups and islam as well and generally history moves on and destroys them but they have a space thats the difference he here. They allow that space because nobody else can agree to a unified policy to fill that vo void. How much more odious can yo obvu get than isis . You would think that if we could agree on anything we could agree on destroying isis. The people that are near isis are afraid of that but its bigger than that. It the russian and turkish agenda and the iranian agenda and the american confused policy there. Its the iraq war. Theres so many Different Reasons why theres this black hole in the region thats being filled. It looks like i might be the first thing between you and your plane. I found that the concept after the civil war [inaudible] if it seems more grounded in the 20th century then what you see when you think about it you have lebanon and syria and at the end of the civil war we dont end up in a place where theres a dictator but rather shaped borders and frozen conflicts. Thank you all. Since we think of dusty system, and its been around in europe for a Long Time Coming it is relatively new to the middle east. The middle east existed in an empire system. The Ottoman Empire and before that the caliphate. In the borders and uniforms and National Anthems was carved up after world war i. It has worked for the region and i think thats why a few look at the state system, you had a mandate for a brief period and a few decades of the mandates mostly ruled by the uk and france. Then after the countries decided even after the United States stepped in and became the overlord of the state system for a few more decades and then the United States decided through the last 20 years of action that we were going to destroy the system so i think that we are at a pivotal time where the system has been torn apart and its been reduced to something that is quite new its almost like going back to the days of 1919 where there is no nationstates anymore and apiece and to see them all conflicts that were always there have emerged to the forefront. Is it a european model lacks theyve had the nationstates longer so we are in a new phase in the middle east and with that, you can chew on that on your drive home and thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations]