this is "gps," the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria. today on the show, with delicate negotiations under way in north korea, a possible rupture over the iran deal, the question is, can you have diplomacy without diplomats? the state department has gutted

many ambassadorships. the u.n. security council often deadlocked, and the president seems to prefer tweets over talk. i will be joined by ronan far row, fresh off a pulitzer prize win to talk about his important new book. >> they are eviscerating the state department, rather than fixing it. and the present and future of the grand old party, is paul ryan's exit a sign of the end of the party of ronald reagan? i will examine the republican takeover with two senior members of that party. also, after almost 60 years, the era of castro's rule in cuba is about to come to an end. first fidel, then his brother raul have ruled the island nation since 1959. will the new president bring any change in cuba's relations with its neighbor, 90 miles away? but first, here's my take. the most remarkable parts of

james comey's memoir are not about donald trump. some are gossip and color commentary. but in his discussion of the george w. bush administration, comey is far more revealing, and highlights something crucial and hopeful about america. the role of lawyers and our legal culture. many of the battles the trump administration is having with the so-called deep state are actually reruns of battles from the bush years. as comey recounts in detail after 9/11, the bush administration put in place a surveillance program called stellar wind, that justice department lawyers decided on review was illegal. in march 2004, comey was deputy attorney general, and filling in for his boss, john ashcroft, who was ill. and comey refused to renew the program. white house chief of staff, andy card, and white house counsel alberto gonzalez, decided to head to ashcroft's hospital room to pressure him to sign the

reauthorization documents over comey's objections. on learning of this, comey raced to the hospital and asked then fbi director, robert mueller, to join him for moral support. it turned out, ashcroft didn't need any prodding. he turned card and gonzalez away. mueller, who arrived a few minutes afterward, said to the bed-ridden attorney general, who was technically his boss, in every man's life, there comes a time when the good lord tests him. you passed your test tonight. comey writes that he felt like crying. the law had held, he said. the pressure from the white house was intense, including a stunning exchange that comey recounts between himself and the president himself, george w. bush. bush explained to his sub cabinet appointee, i say with the laws for the executive branch. comey responded, only i say what the justice department can certify as lawful and we can't here. we have done our best. but as martin luther said, here

i stand, i can do no other. what is striking about these episodes is not only that comey and mueller were subordinates who owed their jobs to bush, but that they were republicans. both comey and mueller have consistently put their obligations to the law and the country above personal loyalty and partisan politics. this behavior may be the product of personal character, but it is also formed by legal training. the story is really not just about mueller and comey, but the lawyers in various parts of the government who believe that it is crucial for the country that the government operate within the law. even if the president wishes otherwise. recall that when trump wanted to fire mueller last june, white house counsel, don mcgahn, reportedly threatened to resign in protest. just before leaving the bush administration, comey gave a speech to the national security agency in which he said, it is the job of a good lawyer to say

yes. it is as much of the job of a good lawyer to say no. no is much, much harder. no must be spoken into a storm of crisis with loud voices all around, with lives hanging in the balance. no is often the undoing of a career. one of the often repeated criticisms of america is that it has too many lawyers. maybe. but one of the country's great strengths is its legal culture. as i've written before, it was worried that without a class of patriotic and selfless arift toe accurates, america could fall prey to demagogs and populists. but he took great consideramfore fact that america's aristocracy can be found at the bar or on the bench. tocqueville saw a form of public accountability that would help preserve the blessings of democracy without allowing its untrammelled vices.

comey's memoir re memoir reveald be deeply grateful. for more, go to cnn.com/fareed and read my "washington post" column this week. and let's get started. on monday, ronan farrow was awarded a pulitzer prize at the ripe young age of 30. the honor was bestowed upon him for his ground breaking reporting on harvey weinstein in the new yorker. he has always been an early bloomer. he went to college at age 11, accepted at yale law school at 16. he deferred to go work at the state department under the legendary diplomat, richard holbrooke. he's had jobs at state and u.n. now he has written a book about how the united states relates to the world. for it he interviewed many of

the top luminaries in american foreign policy, including every living secretary of state. this is his first tv interview around the new book, "war on peace: the end of diplomacy and the decline of american influence." pleasure to have you on. >> pleasure it be here, fareed. >> at a time when there are sensitive negotiations going on over north korea, at a time when the iran deal seems in peril, i want to ask you, what is the big problem you see with this -- this sort of short shrift being given to diplomacy, with the state department budget being cut? there are a lot of people who say, that's fine, the secretary of state can negotiate. the president can go and meet kim. what is being missed here? >> america is undergoing a fundamental transformation in how it relates to the rest of the world. we have fewer and fewer negotiators and diplomats and subject matter experts on the kinds of complicated occasions like iran and north korea that

you just mentioned, and more and more soldiers and spies making policy. and in war on peace, i talk about the ramifications in a very immediate sense, in conflict after conflict around the world. >> so i look at, you know -- when i was reading it, what i was thinking of is, with the korean negotiations. there is a very complicated set of background material you need to understand. those are the kind of details that subject -- you know, area experts understand assistant secretaries, deputy assistant secretaries understand. is it your worry that that's the kind of texture that we're losing? >> are literally, you can see the loss of that texture when you look at the structure of the state department. so there were two earlier diplomatic runs at a north korea settlement. under clinton, where there actually were some concessions made on the north korea side and then they cheated and it fell through. and late in the game, under george w. bush and condoleezza rice. and condoleezza rice is one of the many secretaries of state to

talk about that in this book. we talk about cris hill, the lead negotiator. when he attempted that, we had an entire north korea unit at the state department. experts who were steeped in this. and it's an oversimplification to say that was a complete failure. while in the end, we didn't get what we wanted, there were huge in roads made. they shut down some of their plants for the very first time. and i think the disappointment of the experts, fareed, is that each time we make those in roads, a new administration steps away. the obama administration stepped away. and right now, we're at a point where we haven't leveraged any of those gains in the past. and indeed seem to be throwing out all of the people who know how to leverage those gains. >> in fact, you point out in the trump administration there really has been -- it's not just that they have not filled positions, but they have actually in many cases swept out lots of area experts, lots of substance -- you know, people who understand nuclear weapons and things like that. >> the state department is being decimated, as we speak. and i tell the stories of a lot

of the frankly brave diplomats. these are people serving their country, being forced out. the top nuclear arms expert at the state department was fired unceremoniously in the first days of the trump administration. this is at a time when that's one of our greatest challenges in the world. you can see the lack of logic in that. >> the interviews with the secretaries of state are fascinating. you have colin powell, former republican secretary of state, saying that trump is gutting the state department. perhaps the most interesting one was rex tillerson, who gives you the only interview i've seen where he on the record describes his frustrations and essentially why he was -- eventually fired. what do you think is the big story? what did you learn from what rex tillerson told you? >> so i think in each of these conversations with all of the living secretaries of state, people will find something surprising. some moment of candor they didn't expect. you mentioned how searing colin

powell was, saying we're mortgaging our future right now. this is a man who cared deeply about the work force at the state department. that was a common sentiment. you know, george p. schultz saying, you don't have to take a job when he surveys the way rex tillerson acted on these orders to gut the state department. and as you say, rex tillerson himself really surprisingly candid in his last days in the job. >> for example, he says, he did not want those state department cuts. he privately argued against them. but he thought i think this may be his corporate background, once the decision was made, he had to be a loyal soldier. >> he did. although he also said, look, i may judge just been too inexperienced. he said when he started defending those deep, deep cuts to the state department on the hill, he had only been in the job briefly, and he might not have known better. he said i think with hindsight that maybe he would have done things differently. that seemed to be the suggestion throughout our conversation. >> he said something very

peculiar, that he thought that congress would increase the state department's budget, even though he was not requesting an increase. >> which every other living secretary of state i spoke to found astonishing. that's not how budget advocacy works with the hill when you are the head of a government agency. but he said he thought going in that you could just ask them for less money and they would throw more at you, which actually in a bizarre set of circumstances, fareed, he spent a year with congress trying to throw money at the state department and fight this administration and these cuts. >> what else did you there that -- you know, with tillerson, people are trying to figure out, was he, you know, fundamentally a good guy, shafted by trump? was he the wrong man for the wrong job? what was your take-away? >> are you know, with those comments he made about the lack of experience, i do think he was somewhat out of his depth, despite having this track record as a private sector manager, he seemed unable or unwilling to invest in managing the state department. he put a lot of blame on the white house. he said the white house was

cumbersome and slow and fought him at every turn, as he tried to fill all of these empty roles across the state department. you know, there was a fair amount of passing the buck. but ultimately, he took on that job, and i think it will stand as one of the most devastating and pretenures of a secretary of state ever. >> you clearly are in love with the process of diplomacy. you talk about following richard holbrooke as he was negotiating various warlords and the pakistani government. and is it your sense that that kind of thing is just not valued any more in america? >> well, i would be careful to say -- i don't think that this book is in love with diplomacy. i think it views some very real problems in diplomacy with clear eyes. no one is arguing that america's diplomatic and development apparatus is without need for reform. it is a stalt stoplightfying bureaucracy. it's broken in a lot of ways. but what we are doing is

throwing the baby out with the bath water. they are eviscerating the state department rather than fixing it. >> stay with us. when we come back, we're going to talk about something completely different. what you won your pulitzer prize for. harvey weinstein and #metoo. hat, eaten at your desk. panera. food as it should be. now delivered. my digestive system used to make my feel sluggish. but those days are over. now, i take metamucil every day. it naturally traps and removes the waste that weighs me down. so i feel... lighter. try metamucil and begin to feel what lighter feels like. take the metamucil 2-week challenge and begin to feel what lighter feels like. log on and get started at metamucil.com/2weekchallenge.

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on october 10th of last year, the new yorker published a 7,000-word article written by my guest, ronan farrow. it was entitled from aggressive overtures to sexual assault, harvey weinstein accusers tell their stories. many more pieces would follow. this week he was awarded the pulitzer prize for his work on weinstein, alongside megan tuohy and jodi kantor on the same subject. in the ensuing six months, the #metoo movement has exploded in

the united states and around the world. i wanted to explore some of that with ronan. what did you discover when you were doing the reporting? what surprised you? what startled you? >> it was always very clear to me, fareed, this was not a story about harvey weinstein or a story about hollywood. this was a story about the abuse of power. and the way survivors of sexual violence are silenced and intimidated in this culture. and, you know, those words you describe were given for not just this one article about the revelations related to harvey weinstein, but for a series of articles by me and a group of other reporters who did incredible work, exposing those systems. talking about how if you are that rich and that powerful, you can hire, you know, combat-ready spies to follow people using false identities. you can intimidate and influence the judicial process and the legal process. these are systems that we

continue and need to examine in industry after industry and in every walk of life. >> do you feel that, you know, when you say it's about power, it's even -- it seems to me, it's about power more than even about sex. in other words, it is the inequality of the power relation that seems to be at the heart of it. that people almost -- harvey weinstein could have hired people to give him massages, people who do that. but he chose to really humiliate these actresses, partly because i think -- i'm speculating here. but he liked that power differential, if you will. >> he was in an echelon of powerful american man that can command tremendous resources to silence people. and that extended to the reporters working on this story. you know, many of us were threatened and intimidated in various ways, and i think we've all worked very hard to not become the story. but it is important that people know that in this country, you still see a version of the truth

filtered by the most powerful people in this country. and media companies aid and abet that. the law aids and abets that at times. those are real problems. >> do you think that we are now in a different place with regard to women in the workplace and their ability to work without having to live under, you know, some of the kind of things you describe, or even the kind of double standards that women have always dealt with in the workplace? >> i sincerely hope so, fareed. i think we have a long way to go. a lot of this story was driven by women who were tremendously brave, and put a lot on the line. but also had the benefit of some spotlight, some platform. and in industry after industry, these same stories are playing out, without the benefit of that spotlight or those marquis names. and you know, this is happening from the boardroom to the assembly line. and i hope what people take away from this is how far we still have to go, that we can't rest on our laurels on this.

>> ronan farrow, pleasure to have you on. >> thank you, fareed. >> next, what would ronald reagan think of the republican party. what would he think of what donald trump has done to his republican party. i will talk to two smart conservatives, all about it, when we come back. it does but they're not all the same. who knew? i had no idea. so she said, look for one that's shaped like a dental tool with a round brush head. go pro with oral-b. oral-b's rounded brush head surrounds each tooth to gently remove more plaque, and oral-b is the first electric toothbrush brand accepted by the american dental association for its effectiveness and safety. my mouth feels so clean. i'll only use an oral-b. oral-b. brush like a pro.

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ronald reagan preached free markets, free trade, and limited government. he signed the largest amnesty for undocumented immigrants in american history. he talked about america's god-given mission to spread democracy abroad. today donald trump has a different definition of the republican party. and we're going to talk about that with dan senor, a former adviser to both paul ryan and mitt romney, and mona, senior of the ethics and policy center and a columnist. what do you think the significance of paul ryan resigning is? >> paul ryan no longer fits in the donald trump republican party. he is -- in the first place, he took seriously the accumulating national debt and attempted to drag his party and country toward fiscal sanity. but under president trump, who

insisted that there were no compromises needed whatsoever, no reforms needed to entitlements, he found i suppose the only republican reform that he could do was on the tax side, and so the combination of this bloated and enormous budget they passed, and the tax cuts, ironically has paul ryan, fiscal hawk, leaving congress having presided over a $1 trillion -- >> he's the second speaker to resign in the last three or four years. >> three years. less than three years. >> speakers don't generally just leave their jobs. >> right. this is -- the speaker of the house is one of the most powerful political elected positions in the world. members of congress worked their whole lives to be speaker and never leave. tom foley lost his seat for re-election, 2004. newt gingrich faced major setbacks in the late '90s and had to step down. you have boehner and ryan leaving, basically because the institution has become

dysfunctional. it is very hard to lead the republican house conference. >> why? >> republicans have a 23-seat majority right now. the freedom caucus is 30 seats. so, i mean, you just do the math. it's just -- you know, there is very hard to get much done. and if you look at the average midterm loss of the party in the white house, 28, 30 seats, it's going to be very hard to have any kind of congressional governing majority going forward. i think that's one reason ryan is stepping back. >> can i add another? >> do you think the internal polls -- because you see them -- >> yeah. >> are they showing the republican party faces a big problem? because in the polls we see, the gap has narrowed. the democrats are not doing as well as they were. >> so the generic ballaot has come down. democrats up four, down from where it was. and everybody talks about these retirements. 42 republican incumbents retiring. the democrats are unlikely to win most of those seats. i just think what is not quantifiable at this point is the energy on the other side.

the only data we have on that are the special elections we have seen so far. and every one of those special elections, the democrats are turning out in almost presidential-year levels. massive. and the republicans are not. the republicans don't seem to have that much to be excited about. and the democrats are amped up. so i think the generic ballot data is important, but i think you've got to look at the enthusiasm on the other side. and i think -- i worry that's like a freight train. >> i want to ask you about -- the sort of issue of why trump's ratings are so high among republicans. and i think you experienced that at cpac, where you gave a speech. and you didn't get into the ideological quantities of trump. you said how can we celebrate a man who has these many strikes against him in terms of his character. and you got booed. do you think -- what did that tell you about the republican party? >> well, it was that and there was one other aspect, which was

this invitation to mary ann le pen, who was an honored guest of a major conservative organization. >> and the national front has a history of anti-semitism and racism. >> exactly. which she has not separated herself from, this le pen. all right. so what it says is that the party is becoming -- it's in danger of becoming a cult. a personality cult for donald trump. the conference, a three-day cpac conference was established to be a cheerleading session for him. there are very few people who were skeptics who were invited. and so that's the danger. but as we just heard, there is -- that is a part of the republican coalition. but it is also true that suburban, college-educated voters are very dismayed, disheartened, they're not showing up, especially women. and so there are many parts of the party, there are many moving parts. and we don't yet know how it will all shake out.

and i don't believe that the time has come to give up on the republican party entirely and to say it's a lost cause, it's become a trump cult. i think there are still many, many republicans who are very -- you know, who don't -- do not like trump, preferred him to hillary. but would love to see a challenger in 2020. >> i think what trump has introduced or -- and i think he's a symptom of it. i don't think he's a catalyst of it -- is a level of hyper populism and nativism on the right that where you have conferences like it, they think it's okay that marine le pen comes to speak. i think many of us didn't see, didn't anticipate. and so i think there's a couple things going on. i think traditional republican ideas still have support among the base of the party. you know, i think we are going to face an entitlement crisis in 10 or 20 years, and conservatives will be -- even at the grass roots, will be supportive of doing something significant. some of the ideas that paul ryan had advocated. but again, what i didn't foresee was this -- sort of the social

cultural nastiness. toxicity. >> but you don't see the trump takeover of the republican party as complete. >> no. because, you know, historically the party is defined basically by who the most senior elected official is of that party. and right now that person is donald trump. and when donald trump goes, someone will succeed him. it could be tom cotton, it could be ben sasse, young military vets running as republicans in this cycle. smart, impressive, energetic people. they sound a lot more like paul ryan on many issues. all be it not all, but on many issues than they do like donald trump. one of those people will succeed. mike pence. i mean, his own vice president. nikki haley. mike pompeo. look at the people who you would see as the bench of the republican party. they sound much like -- much more like the pretrump party than the current trump party. >> fascinating conversation. we'll have you guys back. thank you so much. next on "gps," ronan farrow

told us earlier how the #metoo movement spread from the united states around the world. we will zero in on india and the reaction to a rape there. it is a chilling story, when we come back. if you miss a show go to cnn.com/fareed for my itunes podcast. en. an expectation to surpass. but that's the point. ♪ bring us doubt, and we'll bring you the first car with true hands free driving for the freeway. bring us a challenge, and we'll reinvent what it means to own a car. ♪ bring us all your expectations, and we'll defy them. again, and again, and again. was a success for lastchoicehotels.comign badda book. badda boom. this year, we're taking it up a notch. so in this commercial we see two travelers at a comfort inn with a glow around them, so people watching will be like, "wow, maybe i'll glow too if i book direct

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now for our "what in the world" segment. to anyone when india comes to mind, it's for its tinsel, the

vibrant film industry or you might think of the economy and the world's fastest growing, taking 1.3 billion people on a path. but over the past week, we have seen a very different side of india, darker in every sense. protests have engulfed the country over a series of recent rapes. in one particularly horrifying case, investigators said that a girl tending her family's horses was kidnapped and taken to a temple in a place in january. there a group of men took turns drugging and raping her, investigators said. after five days, they strangled her with her own scarf and left her body in the woods. she was 8 years old. if we could show you her picture, you would see the image of a smiling, clear-eyed child. but she was not just any child. she was a muslim. that matters, because the overwhelming majority of india, 80%, is hindu, and india's largest minority is muslim.

tension between the two groups remains a constant, but when leaders encourage harmony, tensions tend to wane, and when they ferment hatred, often turn into persecution and violence. since the prime minister ascended to power four years ago, tensions have been rising. newspapers are filled with reports of vigilante gangs, many of them with ties to the hindu nationalist party, lynching muslims and other minorities for supposedly slaughtering cows a crime in most of the country, because cows are sacred for hindus. what does this have to do with a child's rape? investigators said the men who attacked the child wanted to expel her nomadic muslim community from the majority hindu area. if true, it would mark a grotesque escalation of a pattern of targeted violence against muslims. but here's the really shocking thing. a mob of lawyers and at least two lawmakers from modi's party

came out in support of those accused of the rape and murder earlier this month. right wing hindu groups in the area allege the investigators, some of whom are muslim, were biased, that the charges they filed against the eight accused, now all arrested, were politically motivated and were an invention. for days as outrage mounted, prime minister modi said nothing. when he spoke, his comments were perfunctory. [ speaking in foreign language ] >> translator: as a society, as a country, we are all ashamed of it. in any part of the country or in any region, incidents like these shake human sensitivities. i want to assure the country that no culprit will be spared. >> what does all of this mean? the defense of the accused, like the lynchings themselves, is all part of a political pattern that serves as a message to minorities, says a professor of political science at brown

university. the message, he says, is this. muslims have to be subjected to hindu majority taranism. their rights are secondary and to be decided by the majority. that message, through modi's lukewarm condemnation, is now reinforced from the top. how can such a story be possible in india, the world's largest, diverse democracy? well, india has made progress and it will make more. modi was silent about the little girl who was raped and killed, but he has launched an enormous campaign to educate girls. this is the kind of initiative increasingly seen globally as the only way forward for developing countries. he has also been a good steward of the economy. he is himself hard working and honest, with no taint of corruption around him. this is the paradox of progress. look at places like china, turkey, even the united states, and many of these countries, the economies march forward, but minute administrative reforms proceed, but in social and

cultural terms, things are actually more complex. it is a sobering reminder that in this arenas in so many, all good things don't go together. up next, after 60 years of people named castro leading cuba, there is a new president of the revolutionary island. will u.s./cuban relations change for the better? we'll explore when we come back. last week. just 1 pill each morning, 24 hours and zero heartburn. it's been the number 1 doctor recommended brand for 10... ...straight years, and it's still recommended today. use as directed. that you don't think about is very much. counties it's really not very important. i was in the stone ages as much as technology wise. and i would say i had nothing. you become a school teacher for one reason, you love kids. and so you don't have the same tools, you don't always believe you have the same... outcomes achievable for yourself.

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will the change in name at the top alter anything else significant in the nation? joining me are two people who know that nation well. the author of "cuba: what everyone needs to know" and research fellow at the lbj school of public affairs. and john paul rathbone, editor and author of "sugar: king of havana." let me ask you, julia. is this a symbolic change, or is it more than that. >> look, fareed, clearly it's a symbolic change. but it has to be more than that. if we take a look at the goodbye speech that raul castro gave on thursday, and then the hello speech, the inaugural address of the new president, diaz-cannel, what we heard was both continuity and change. so, of course, symbolic that both castro brothers, one is no longer with us, the other stepped aside, the matter of continuity that was so intensely

emphasized, of course, makes the notion of change one of gradualism, and one of always invoking the legacy that those two brothers brought to the cuban revolution, and how it will remain present. >> john, this is happening at a time the trump administration is reversing the kind of limited opening to cuba that the obama administration made. what's going on on that front, and does it matter? >> it's been a partial reversal of what obama began, as much in rhetoric as anything else. there have been some concrete measures, such as making american visits to cuba more difficult. and the clampdown on the military-owned companies that dominate the cuba's tourism sector. but a lot of it has been more rhetorical than actual. and there has been this curious so-called sonic boom attack, which has affected american diplomats, and canadian

diplomats and their families. and that has been -- i'd argue for the united states, a fig leaf. certainly that, you know something happened. but also has been a fig leaf for a gradual ratcheting up of the rhetoric there. >> julia, let me ask you about the legacy of the castros. is cuba ready for significant liberalization? have they -- is there a sense in which there were things that couldn't be done while the castros were alive that not just the cuban people, but officials are all just kind of waiting to do? that was -- that's often been the case in other authoritarian or consumie communist regimes. >> raul began governing cuba in 2006 and formally in 2018. so we've had ten good years of a reform agenda by cuban consumist revolutionary standards with the beginnings of an opening to the private sector, more foreign

investment, more let's call it small freedoms. cubans can travel freely off the island, open their even business. the state is much less present than it once was. but the impulse to look to other transitions in the former socialism with prosperity, with pockets of capitalism, with a sovereign foreign policy, and this notion that a kind of rapid overnight liberalization, ala the restructuring we saw after the soviet bloc is really nowhere on the a generjenagenda. >> so john, even though they have a strong military focus, what do you think cuba looks like five years from now? >> a poor country just like it is now, with hopefully a more

mixed economy. i'm thinking from the point of view of havana. one reason the reforms haven't advanced is there is a political fallout to liberalizing the economy. it implies necessarily less economic control and political control. that was the case in western europe with reforms, and once you start down that road, politically speaking, it's a very slippery slope. >> julia, what is the cuban attitude towards the united states? do they want more contact? do they feel again like this would be a moment post-castro to free modern relations? >> when we had the last two years of the obama administration and the opening of commercial and diplomatic ties, what you also saw was a political case that raul castro was making and others internally that cuba could, in fact, open

not rapidly but at a steady pace without losing its sovereignty and its control over its future. and so now what i think we see is still in cuba and among the cuban people a very positive and natural feeling toward americans. it is unnatural for us to have had this dissonance for so long, so i think what we're looking at on the cuban side is sort of a long history of waiting out washington, but now a kind of social and political attitude which basically says the door is still open but with caution. >> fascinating problem. now, i have two questions i want you to think about. how many books did you read last year and what percentage of americans read no books at all in 2017? on to both and we'll get you the answers when we come back.

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get internet on our gig-speed network and add voice and tv for $34.90 more per month. call or go on line today. if there's something i love and actually tried to sell on this show, it's books. i like talking to authors about their ideas, i try to always read a book or two which leads to my book talk this week. 750 million people cannot read. the numbers are on the rise globally increasing by 5% per decade since 1950. tomorrow is world book day. it brings me to my question. what percent of american adults say they have not read a book or even part of a book in the past year, according to the pugh research center?

4%, 14%, 24% or 54%? before i tell you the correct answer, let me recommend a book. this week it's a classic. mortimer adler's "how to read a book." this extended essay tells you not only how to read a book but how to compromise any written material. the book was revised by charles vandoorne. the correct answer to the gps challenge is c. 24% of americans say they have not read a book or even part of a book in the last year. that goes for books in electronic form, printed form or even audio form. that means 60 million americans did not curl up with any type of book in 2016. they found that few books

correlated had american book reading. those who never finished college are more likely to report not reading as college graduates. and hispanic adults are roughly twice as likely than whites to be non-readers, though american-born hispanics read more than whites. for all the political and cultural differences, we read about at the same rate. about one-fourth of america and one-fourth of urban americans did not read a book in 2017. as the president, who is not a big book reader himself, would say it's sad. others are still struggling to try to. in fact, 18% of american adults perform at or below the lowest level of the litmus scale used in the department of education, meaning they would struggle to

read and comprehend a whole book. please donate to your favorite local or national literacy association on world book day and help groove that number. my favorite here in new york is literacy partners. go to ms nrk cnn.com/fareed to . thank you for joining my program. i will see you next week. hello, everyone, and welcome this sunday. i'm fredricka whitfield. this breaking news we continue to follow this hour, a manhunt underway in antioch, tennessee after a gunman kills four people and injures four others at a waffle house restaurant. here's what we know right now. police are asking for the public's help in finding 29-year-old travis reink ing. authorities say he arrived in a truck and came out