of weeks we will hear about some very important cases they are taking up that we should all be paying attention to. in particular, one of them is a sequel to hobby lobby. we should hear that any day. that's another case that takes women's access to contraception against the religious right of organizations that have health insurance and possibly even more critical, and very key to the issues that justice ginsburg has devoted her life to is cases that come from texas and mississippi. mississippi trying to close down its last abortion clinic. texas trying to shut down 75 percent of their abortion clinics and the question will be, will they take the case and if they do we should get a decision a few months before the presidential election and it's going to be a question of,

does it violate a woman's constitutional right to shut down every clinic in her state if you say it's to protect her? we don't know what role justice ginsburg will have in selecting these cases but we do know there's a lot at stake. we learned that she wears a special collar to dissent. so next hearing, there will be no camera in the court but anyone who's sitting in the room, any liberal sitting in the room is not going to want to see that dissenting collar come june. >> host: i have to make one point before we go. christmas is coming. hanukkah is coming. hanukkah is also coming. notorious r bg is for sale after this program. it makes an excellent present for whatever holiday you choose to celebrate and i hope, shana

and irin will sign the copies for you and i hope you will join mein thanking them for this excellent panel . [applause] [inaudible conversation] >> everyday books are reviewed by publications throughout the country. here's a look at recently reviewed titles premiering this weekend on book tv. the naval academy was professor jason reviewed the gorgeous account of the manhunt and capture of balkan war criminals which included slobodan

milosevic who were indicted by the international criminal tribunal in the hague. he writes in the washington independent review of books, the book is loaded with horror stories. stories of procrastination and obfuscation. and stories of courage, determination and success in bringing many ethnic cleansing masterminds and functionaries to justice.andy notes that much of what is new in board's book is his extensive interviews withspecial forces soldiers , a wide range of war crimes investigators and intelligence officials. nick littlefield and david next on's recounting of the life of the late senator ted kennedy was reviewed in us today by his washington bureau chief susan page. she notes, the book doesn't just show how the sausage is made as the clichi about making laws goes. it also details how the pigs were chosen, what knives the butchers wheel and which sauerkraut recipes are used to make the main dish more palatable.

she continues, the authors pitched the story as a blueprint for making washington work again but it unintentionally underscores how much the political landscape has changed. and new york times science writer natalie engineer commented on jeffrey lieberman's history of psychiatry for the times sunday book review section. his engineer says lieberman recognizes that many people remain skeptical about his specialty and uncomfortable with the notion of mental illness generally. it's one thing for somebodyto suffer from a malfunctioning of the body's infrastructure, like thyroid disease or appendicitis but mental illness targets the mind , the seat of the self and its symptoms are often disguised as personal defects. here's jeffrey lieberman addressing the disparity between physical and mental health care. >> the good news is that with a lot ofthings , if you have als or alzheimer's, if you have pancreatic cancer, there's not

much then can be done. you need to wait for the rest to be discovered but for the mass majority of mental disorders , as i can find them, we only have enough to make a huge difference. we just don't provide it in an accessible way so the only way that this gets the attention of the media, the public and government is when there's a mass violent incident and some individual who is mentally ill and untreated kills people. >> watch for these programs and more this weekend on book tv. >> alan friedman has been a correspondent for numerous organizations over the past 30 years including the wall street journal, the financialtimes. he's the author of a new book, the epic story of the

billionaire who took over italy. you get access to silvio berlusconi . >> i managed to persuade former prime minister bliss tony back in the early 2014to give me his time and we ended up spending 18 months together. i said i was going to do this on the model of frost nixon . we were going to videotape at least 100 hours of interviews which we did, making a documentary right now but berlusconi is an outrageous character. it was a fascinating experience. there you have a self-made millionaire, a kind of italian donald trump in real estate who then becomes the kind of rupert murdoch billionaire media tycoon. then he gets elected to be prime minister.then he has 65 separate bribery corruption mafia scandals. has been put on trial all the time and of course, in all of this he was an important person meeting vladimir putin, his good friend. acting as a middleman between george w. bush and hooton during the post-cold war years. a friend of qaddafi, helped

save qaddafi in the old days. disagree with hillary clinton over libya back in 2011 but berlusconi has a lot of inside stories to tell. when i was able to supplement the biography with interviews with mister putin himself. i went to the kremlin, i saw vladimir putin, he was very kind. he loved talking about his friend berlusconi. americans have a hard time understanding this italian billionaire prime minister because he has such a concentration of power and is so controversial andso many sex scandals that it's hard to imagine the american equivalent . >> was berlusconi indicative of their politics? >> i would say berlusconi is the most controversial politician in europe in the last 50 years. there are honest and good politicians in italy. it's not all like berlusconi. berlusconi is typical of no

one. he's unique. this is a guy who could look at barack obama and go on national televisionand say , obama, he is young, he's handsome and he has a year round tag and when i sent you berlusconi that's racist he says no, it was a compliment. i would take two or three months to get a can like that so berlusconi lives in his own bubble. he's a very colorful, controversial figure. >> how did he stay in power in italy? >> he marketed himself like coca-cola or marlboro and uses television empire. remember he controlled 50 percent of the italian television market. use hisstars , he uses power and uses marketing skills. and he promised everything.

he was like a doll in the way he expressed himself and very simple almost older terms and yet the italians ate it up. there's no other figure in italian street as influential as berlusconi in the last century except for mussolini. >> when americans fill the name silvio berlusconi, what comes to mind is bummed about that. what is that? >> there is a chapter all in this book about the bootable. berlusconi's downfall came because of a so-called bone to bone party. the notorious night when he was accused of keeping a harem of 30 women that would do lap dances, fetishistic sex with him. he denies all of that thing it's all on through but bunga bunga got him put on trial in 2011 for sex with an underage prostitute and whenshe was put in jail, berlusconi as prime minister telephoned the police and said , release her. i think she's mubarak's granddaughter.

that turned out not to be true. >> what did you learn in your 18 hours with berlusconi you didn't know before you sat down? >> i guess i learn what it's like to be with a billionaire who knows onlypower, who only knows how to win . who has no self-awareness. doesn't live in the past for the future, he's just there and i learned a lot about the way he and vladimir putin relate to each other. the relationship between putin and berlusconi, i wrote an article in the financial times called the odd couple because here we have bothalpha males . hooton, the former kb g agent. berlusconi, the media mogul and it was fascinating to watch the two of them interacting and see how strong leaders only really respect other strong leaders>> ..