she wrote i am a lela and her new book, "farewell kabul: from afghanistan to a more dangerous world," highlight the errors and miscalculations made by the united states and its allies in the war of afghanistan. and argues the world has been left more, not less dangerous since 9/11. our third author is kim barker whose book "whiskey tango foxtrot (the taliban shuffle mti): strange days in afghanistan and pakistan" about her reporting in afghanistan and pakistan served as the basis for the recent movie whiskey tango foxtrot starring tina fay. her first reporting job with papers in indiana and washington state, after joining the chicago tribune in 2000 when she went abroad and spent 5 years from 2004-2009 as south asia bureau chief based in new jersey and islam about. she writes for the new york times. a times review of her book called at both hilarious and harrowing, two contrasting adjectives that sum up the frequently mixed experience of war reporting. moderating discussion by this impressive group of panelists will be mary jordan, pulitzer prize-winning journalist with washington pos

let me conclude with one final point, and then get to some questions, and let lela have her piece. as i mentioned at the outset, lela has been and is opposed, and it's worth mentioning, there's much poetry in the book. the narrow meaning of poetry, poems, some jewish, ancient and modern, some non-jewish, including her own, but more generally, i want to say there's much poetry in the book, and the people that she describes, and i have a number of personal favorites which i think poetry of the book we'll talk about as we go along. let me -- you can tell me what i said wrong about the book, or answer questions i should ask, but let me start in the following way. in a way, the first question, the most natural question to ask you about this book, and especially a personal book is why did you go to israel, and why did you stay? i'm not going to let you answer that yet because i want to come back to that after we talk about a few things, and i think the first thing to focus on is, in a way, one part of the substance of the book is you say after, you know, coming to israel for whatever rep

lela puts it this way. life for israel's jews is not focused on death and destruction but on life and construction. they have built a wonderful country and are still building it. there is one final audience that i might mention and that would be israelis. they might be curious how they look or rather all the things they take for ranted about life, so perhaps some israelis will pick this up as well. let me conclude with one final point and then get to some questions and let lela have her piece. as i mentioned at the outset, and i thought it worth mentioning, there is much poetry in this book. some poems, some jewish, some non-jewish including our own. more generally want to say there is much collection in the book as a whole and the people and the events she describes and i have a number of personal favorites which i think ought to exemplify the poetry in the book but we will perhaps talk about that as we go along. so, you can now tell me what i got wrong about the book. either in answer to my questions or a

>> co-authors paul marsha, lela gilbert, and nina shea look at the's accusation of christians around the world, next on book tv. >> welcome. on behalf of our chair, i'd like to thank everybody for attending. and thank our authors and panelists for making this program possible. my job is to be brief. i'll try to meet that. and secondly, my only task is to introduce eric metexas who is going to chair the program. he doesn't need much introduction because he has done many important things nobody to you and others that will be joining us via television. perhaps some of you have already read his book, pastor, martyr, prophet, spy, "new york times" best seller and an important book about an important man. in addition, metexas was the keynote speaker at the national prayer breakfast here washington, dc and i believe there are copies of that presentation available outside. we're also grateful for him being a participant in this book, persecuted, which we're releasing today and this panel is about. he helped to write the forward and has been an important contributor to the work of the office

nina wrote a book 16 years ago, so did lela at eye on the persecution of christians. and both of those books if you asked us what's the worst place now, the answer is clear, we are stuck. made a particular focus. there is tremendous lobbying in the united states. by a whole range of groups, but in terms of the number of bodies, most of them were dealing with christians because there are 350,000 congregations in this country, so you can mobilize far more people than say amnesty international can. but particular focus on this event. the bush administration and colin powell said will get rid of this whole idea of special envoy. it messes up the lines of authority in the state department. but against that pressure that was strong lobbying by coalition in the united states to have a special envoy for sudan, which was granted. john did a very good job. there were many other countries involved and i don't just -- those were the central players, those were the largest players. that led to a cease-fire in sudan that laid onto a a referendum and accretion of in this country in

lela gilbert, paul marshall and nina shea. they prefer true or false questions. if you can't come up with feature or false question, multiple-choice does. thank you very much. so anyway, i really mean to facilitate the conversation. there's no right or wrong answers. we really want to facilitate a conversation. my first question before i sit down and it will is why did you write this book? if that's not enough of a softball at good others. but how come i get this wonderful product will be my follow up question. for any of you, you won't have to answer this, but that is the main question. i've got some thoughts on that, but we are interested in yours. anyone who wants to lead off and will just have a conversation. >> first of all, really appreciate your taking the time to be here and really draw public attention to this important story. all of us, and i'll let my colleagues speak for themselves, have been working on this issue documenting religious freedom violations in christian persecution for many years. we have other books from 60 years ago on the same subject