Here is a quick quiz. What do these people have in common? Aristide Briand, Gustav Stresemann, William Randall Cremer, Ludwig Quidde, Nathan Söderblom, Norman Angell, René Cassiu, Betty Williams, Alfonso García Robles, and Máiread Corrigan? Except for Briand and Stresemann (for those who can recall their college courses on European history), probably even most educated readers have never heard of any of them. The answer is - all have been recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. "Peace, They Say" is an informative and surprising look at the award and the political culture behind it by Jay Nordlinger, the multifaceted editor of the National Review, blogger and music critic for The New Criterion.
Informative because, in the first instance, Nordlinger reveals the otherwise insignificant country behind the prize itself - Norway. When Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, decided to create it in 1893 (along with prizes for physics, chemistry, medicine, and literature) Norway was linked in a union with Sweden. (Nobel even wrote the bequest in his own hand, in Swedish.) As a result, a five-person committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament, the Störting, mulls over nominations from around the globe each year and makes its choice in the autumn. (Some years there have been no prizes awarded.)
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