Presents brief biographical portraits of the 106 recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize during its 100-year history.

In this groundbreaking and controversial critique of the selections of Nobel Peace Prize winners, an eminent Norwegian lawyer and peace activist calls for its return to legal and moral compliance with the will of Alfred Nobel who wished to support disarmament to prevent war. The Nobel Peace Prize is the world's most coveted award, galvanizing the world's attention for 110 years. In recent decades, it has also become the world's most reviled award, as heads of militarized states and out-and-out warmongers and terrorists have been showered with peace prizes. Delving into previously unpublished primary sources, Fredrik Heffermehl reveals the history of the inner workings of the Norwegian Nobel Committee as it has come under increasing political, geopolitical, and commercial pressures to make inappropriate awards. As a Norwegian lawyer, Heffermehl makes the case that the Norwegian politicians entrusted with the Nobel peace awards have brushed aside the legal requirements in Scandinavian estate law using the prize to promote their own political and personal interests instead of the peace ideas Alfred Nobel had in mind. Evaluating each of the 119 Nobel Peace Prizes awarded between 1901 and 2009, the author tracks the ever-widening divergence of the committee's selections from Nobel's intentions and concludes that all but one of the last ten prizes are illegitimate under the law.

The Nobel Prize, according to the will of its founder Alfred Nobel, are awarded to persons for their services in the field of chemistry, physics, medicine and physiology, literature and peace. The Economic Sciences Prize was introduced by the Swedish Bank and first awarded in 1969. Till 1964, fourteen Indians – Aga Khan III, Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh, Hari Mohan Banerjee, Sanjib Kumar Chaudhuri, Benegal Narsing Rau, Rajah Bhushanman Manikam, Mahesh Prasad Varma alias His Holiness Bal Brahmachari, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Acharya Vinoba Bhave, Mehar Chand Davar, Sri Aurobindo Ghose, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Mahatma Gandhi – were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. An apostle of non-violent struggle and a crusader against colonialism and inequality Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi) was a much revered world figure. Between 1924 and 1948, in nearly 100 nominations (individual or joint) he was proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize. And yet despite international support, Gandhi was never a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Why was it so? Was it the fault of the Nobel Committee? Perhaps his associates made mistakes? In order to answer such questions, the nomination letters, newspaper cuttings, reports of the experts’ of the Nobel Committee, confidential record of the Committee, and other unpublished documents were consulted from the Archives of the Peace Prize Institute. The results are discussed and analysed in this volume. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

In 2002, President Jimmy Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize for his dedicated efforts for peaceful solutions to advance human rights and delivered this inspiring lecture—now published in ebook form. On October 11, 2002, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2002 was Jimmy Carter, making him the first American-born laureate since Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the prize in 1967. President Jimmy Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 2002, and delivered this inspiring lecture.

This is the little known story of how Theodore Roosevelt, as president, used his mediation and diplomatic skills to end the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Culminating in the Portsmouth Peace Treaty, this journey describes how TR's unrelenting determination bridged the inflexible divide between Japan and Russia-two countries who could not muster the moral courage to embrace peace. The treaty fulfilled his foreign policy vision of a global balance of power among the major international nations at the turn of the twentieth century. Acclaimed worldwide as a peacemaker, he was recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize for his unique personal style of diplomacy of "speaking softly" rather than "carrying a big stick." Highly relevant to the state of world affairs today and the challenge of America's leadership role in global foreign policy.

From the first woman Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Bertha von Suttner (1905), to the latest and youngest female Nobel laureate, Malala Yousafzai (2014), this book in its second edition provides a detailed look at the lives and accomplishments of each of these sixteen Prize winners. They did not expect recognition or fame for their work--economist Emily Greene Balch (1946) was surprised to learn that anyone knew about her. But they did not work in isolation: all met with discouragement, derision, threats or--in Yousafazi's case--attempted murder and exile. A history of the Prize and a biographical sketch of Alfred Nobel are included.

A selection of thirty-eight Nobel Peace Prize laureates who strove to promote international peace through the development of organizations from the antecedents of the League of Nations to the United Nations."--Back cover.

"This wonderful book gives a comprehensive review of the Nobel prizes awarded since 1901 Reading the book is like reading a compressed history of humankind in the twentieth century. It shows how by and large the Nobel prizes have indeed tracked the epoch-making events in this turbulent century."M VeltmanNobel Laureate in Physics (1999)Emeritus Professor of PhysicsUniversity of Michigan, Ann Arbor