SUMMARY: In previous books like "The Devil in the White City" and "Isaac's Storm," bestselling author Erik Larson has used everyday people to chronicle historical events. But his latest offering, "The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance during the Blitz," explores Winston Churchill's turbulent first year as Britain's wartime prime minister. Larson joins John Yang to discuss.
SUMMARY: President Trump has long had a complicated relationship with the news media. He tends to seek out reporters he deems friendly, while butting heads with those he accuses of treating him unfairly. As ABC News’ chief White House correspondent, Jonathan Karl has a close-up view of these dynamics, which he describes in his new book, “Front Row at the Trump Show.” Karl joins Judy Woodruff to discuss.
SUMMARY: After nearly 20 years on Wall Street, Chris Arnade left his high-paying career to document Americans living on the margins. Traveling all over the country, he took photographs and wrote about the America that is overlooked. Christopher Booker recently spoke to Arnade about his new book "Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America," in which he documents people living in poverty and addiction.
Christopher Booker (NewsHour): These were the thoughts running through the Wall Street veteran's mind as he walked through some of the most economically challenged parts of New York City toward his million dollar Brooklyn condo.
Chris Arnade: What started seeping in was this realization that we on Wall Street had messed up. This intense obsession with profit and efficiency and thinking that all that matters is growing the economy, damn the consequences. Well, the consequences were really bad.
Christopher Booker: Where would you say is back row America?
Chris Arnade: It's all over. It's not certainly not a red or blue thing. It's a lot of neighborhoods in New York City, it's in Appalachia, it's in California, it's in Chicago, it's everywhere. it's neighborhoods generally and communities that are often adjacent to very wealthy neighborhoods. It's kind of the bulk of the population but the people who don't get a lot of attention, we tend to focus on what I call front row which is people who go to Harvard or Princeton or what have you. I love that picture.
Christopher Booker: What does the word dignity mean to you now after you've finished this book and been working with this thesis as long as you have.
Chris Arnade: Just a desire to be treated like a normal human being.
SUMMARY: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the world's largest private philanthropic organization, with an endowment of $50 billion. Melinda Gates plays a huge role in shaping its work, and her new book, "The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World," chronicles some of the inspiring men and women she has met through it. Judy Woodruff talks to Gates about politics and equality.
SUMMARY: William [J.] Burns, former Deputy Secretary of State and Ambassador to Russia, may have spent more time with Vladimir Putin than other American diplomat. In his book, “The Back Channel,” Burns discusses how a “sense of grievance” underlies Putin's interactions with the U.S. Judy Woodruff talks to Burns about a "failure of imagination" on Syria and the current state of American diplomacy.
SUMMARY: Ten years ago this week, the collapse of Lehman Brothers became the signal event of the 2008 financial crisis. Its effects and the recession that followed, on income, wealth, disparity, and politics are still with us. Economics correspondent Paul Solman walks through those events and consequences with historian Adam Tooze, author of "Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World."
SUMMARY: Bob Woodward says key people in the White House say they spend a third of their time preventing bad things from happening. In his new book, the veteran editor and reporter delivers a stunning and disturbing look inside the Trump presidency, exposing a chaotic White House, lead by a man who has said he believes the key to power is "Fear." Woodward joins Judy Woodruff to discuss his reporting.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join John Yang to discuss the week’s news, including James Comey’s memoir detailing his interactions with and impressions of President Trump, what House Speaker Paul Ryan’s retirement means for the GOP and the pardoning of Scooter Libby.
John Yang (NewsHour): But first to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks, who joins us tonight from San Francisco.
Gentlemen, welcome to you both.
We have a lot of talk about the new book by James Comey. He talks about — describes the President as being unethical, untethered to the truth, and describes his presidency as a forest fire.
David, let me start with you.
What — from what you have read of the reporting and the excerpts, what’s your takeaway?
David Brooks, New York Times: Well, I think President Trump has done a pretty good job of confirming everything Comey said by his tweets today. I mean, the word slimeball shouldn’t be coming out of the White House.
I think it’s aptly titled. One of the things we see in this book is a guy who is like, frankly, a lot of people who work in government in Washington as part of the career civil service, that their loyalty is not to red and blue. And we’re used to covering politics as a red and blue tribal war.
But their loyalty is to their profession, to their agency, to their institution, to some other set of standards. And they get in the middle of red-blue fights and they probably have their own personal opinions, but Comey seems to be a guy who has loyalties to other things.
And he’s offended Democrats mightily. He’s offended the Republican President mightily. And I think he passes the smell test, by and large. And I so think he’s honest that it could — it’s quite possible that Donald Trump didn’t do anything criminal here, but did do something mafioso-like. And that’s, frankly, not a completely new revelation.
John Yang: Mark?
Mark Shields, syndicated columnist: I think David makes a very good point about Jim Comey, who has been a rather remarkable public servant for a long time and then found himself, in 2016, on the receiving end of vilification from both candidates, from the Clinton people for his handling of the e-mail matter right up to the Election Day, and by the Trump people since and then his firing.
And the President’s adding to the sort of annals of American Presidential rhetoric this week, along with malice toward none and charity toward all, and the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, to a weak and untruthful slimeball is what he’s called James Comey.
I do think that this is not to be confused with the “Fire and Fury” book, which was great gossip and great anecdotage. This is the testimony, straightforwardly, on the record, of a rather remarkable public servant who kept notes on everything and gives his own testimony. It’s not hearsay. This is what he says.
And I think it will be given great attention. It’s already gotten great sales. And it will become part of the national dialogue, and much to the consternation of the President.
John Yang: David, I have got to ask you. There is so much of what has been said about this in the press is talking about the sort of personal comments and personal observations about the President, the size of his hands, the complexion, orange tone to his — hue to his face.
It sort of feels like — does it feel to you that Comey is goading the President in a way?
David Brooks: Not really.
And that reads to me like novelistic detail. One of the things we know about Comey is, he’s a serious reader. He’s a big fan of Reinhold Niebuhr, as am I. And so I think he was trying to write a book which had some literary detail that 'you are there.'
I do think, in general, from what I have read of the book and the excerpts, it passes the smell test. One important moment for me was his description of his handling of the Clinton e-mails.
And now he says, my goal consciously wasn’t to let politics influence my decision. But he allows — and this is him showing some vulnerability — he allows the possibility that the thought of her winning election and then having the e-mail investigation come out might seem illegitimate to people.
And he didn’t want her to be elected and then something new comes out right after the election. He thought that might hurt the institution of the Presidency. And so he allows that possibility could have had some unconscious influence on him.
And that strikes me as a man who is looking at himself and saying, is it possible I messed up? Is it possible I was influenced in ways that I wasn’t consciously aware of? That strikes me, by the standards of Washington memoirs, as a reasonably high level of honesty.
Mark Shields: And I think one thing that we will see is, he is a very effective witness on his own behalf. And he’s going — it’s full-court press.
There’s going to be media coverage. He will be on the “NewsHour.” He will be on the networks. He will be everywhere. And he will be answering all the questions, and he will influence, if not drive, much of the conversation for the next couple of weeks.
SUMMARY: James Comey's new book offers unsparing views of President Trump. In "A Higher Loyalty," Comey shares new details about his interactions with Trump, whom he compares to a mafia boss and whose behavior he says is "untethered to the truth." John Yang talks with Yamiche Alcindor and Philip Rucker of The Washington Post about the White House reaction and more.
SUMMARY: What time of day do you do your best work? Author Daniel Pink explores the question in his book “When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing." Jeffrey Brown sits down with Pink to discuss how mood and performance follow regular patterns throughout the day, and what that means for scheduling our lives.
SUMMARY: The state of Israel has a history of great violence, visited on it by its enemies and in return by Israel's own intelligence services and military. In "Rise and Kill First," journalist and author Ronen Bergman writes about the nearly century-long campaign of targeted killing. He joins Nick Schifrin to discuss the secret history of these strikes.
SUMMARY: They are a living political dynasty, and they rarely weigh in on the politics of the day, but in the new book “The Last Republicans,” former Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush reflect on the man currently inhabiting the Oval Office, and much more. Lisa Desjardins sits down with author and historian Mark Updegrove to discuss their father-son relationship and their shared ethos.
SUMMARY: Michael Wolff defended his headline-grabbing new book “Fire and Fury” on Monday, saying he “absolutely” stands by his reporting depicting a chaotic first year inside the Trump White House.
“I spent the better part of seven months in close proximity to everyone in the White House,” Wolff told PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff in an interview Monday. “I had no agenda. I was perfectly willing to write a book in which Donald Trump was the unexpected successful President.”
But Wolff said his White House sources told him they became increasingly alarmed with Trump’s behavior as his first year in office wore on.
Numerous media outlets have reported on a chaotic atmosphere in the White House since Trump took office. But Wolff’s book stands out in part for the on-the-record quotes disparaging Trump or members of his family made by top current and former advisers, like former chief strategist Steve Bannon. Bannon’s comments in the book appeared to cause a rift between him and the White House, which distanced itself from Bannon in recent days.
SUMMARY: In a wide-ranging interview with PBS NewsHour's Judy Woodruff, former Vice President Joe Biden said he believes the U.S. is closer than ever to nuclear war, adding President Trump "undermines" the office of the President. He also talks about his latest book, "Promise me, Dad," which chronicles his son Beau's brain cancer diagnosis and death, and his own decision not to run for President in 2016.
SUMMARY: In an upcoming book, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is quoted as saying a 2016 meeting with Donald Trump Jr., campaign staffers and a group of Russians was “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.” Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times, and Robert Costa host of Washington Week, talk with Hari Sreenivasan about the latest revelations in the Russia investigation and so-called Steele dossier.
SUMMARY: What are the hard questions that CEOs need to grapple with in order to renew and rethink business? Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella joins Judy Woodruff to discuss his new book, “Hit Refresh,” as well as how he’s learned empathy from being a parent, changes to his perceptions of gender and opportunity and his advocacy for immigrants.
SUMMARY: Last year, Bana Alabed sparked a worldwide following for tweeting from Aleppo in Syria while it was under attack amid a years-long civil war. Now, the 8-year-old is authoring a book about surviving and escaping the conflict. NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Marcia Biggs talked to Alabed and her mother in Ankara, Turkey, where they are living today.
SUMMARY: As a college student, Jeffrey Gettleman traveled to East Africa and fell in love. He also fell in love that year with a woman back home. Their time and work apart, and his life and work covering a continent as a Pulitzer prize-winning correspondent for The New York Times, make up the story told in "Love, Africa: A Memoir of War, Romance, and Survival." Jeffrey Brown sits down with Gettleman.
SUMMARY: Who was humorist David Sedaris before he had sold millions of books and made countless live appearances before adoring audiences? In a new book, "Theft By Finding," Sedaris offers a portrait of himself as a younger artist through his personal diaries. Jeffrey Brown sits down with the author to discuss his compulsion to observe, write and perform.
