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bear the ground -- bear the brunt of continuing israeli airstrikes as the u.s. calls for a more precise offensive. amna: the latest court ruling over abortion access highlights the roadblocks and dangers faced during pregnancy by much of the country. >> physicians are unsure what they consider to be their sound judgment would to our attorney general or judges in the state of texas. ♪ >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions and friends of the newshour including jim >> it was like an

aha moment. early-stage companies have this energy. these are people trying to change the world. when i volunteer with women entrepreneurs, it's the same thing. i'm thriving by helping others every day. bdo. >> the john s sam james james l knight foundation. -- and james l knight foundation. >> and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. and friends of the newshour.

this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. amna: welcome to the newshour. a verdict tonight in one of the cases related to the 2020 election. geoff: a federal jury in washington ordered rudy giuliani to pay $148 million to two former georgia election workers for distressed caused by lies he spread during the 2020 election. miles park was in the courtroom today and joins us now. this was a civil trial and the jury was asked only to decide the amount of damages. here's what rudy giuliani told reporters on his way out of the courtroom. >> very little i can say about this. certainly we will appeal. the absurdity of the number

merely underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding. geoff: he's calling that number, 100 $48 million, absurd. how did the jury arrive at that number and what message were they trying to send? >> throughout the entire week, the plaintiff's attorneys were trying to make the case that the jury should send a message of the election lies, especially when the people pushing them are essentially using real people who are getting caught up as casualties made it clear that they wanted the jerry to repair the women's reputation, but more than that they wanted them to send a message that this is not how healthy democracies behave. geoff: we heard from the people subject to mr. giuliani's lies about them.

>> money will never solve all of my problems. i can never move back into the house that i called home. i will always have to be careful about where i go and who i choose to share my name with. geoff: how did their attorneys make the case to the jury that the extreme emotional distress, damaged reputations, was worth that amount? >> it was a two-pronged approach. they had an expert witness who was a marketing professor show how these lies reached tens of millions of americans in the time after voting ended in 2020, and had her put together a strategic communications plan, what it would cost to counter those lies and repair their reputation. that estimate was 47 million dollars. then they said, how do you measure the emotional toll of

this, and both women who were affected testified, got emotional and cried on the stand. the jurors and the public saw more death threats than i could count. we heard racist voicemails that were left for these women, all of that was taken into consideration when the jury was coming up with this number. geoff: we heard rudy giuliani say an appeal is on the way. >> it's a little bit unclear. one of the strange things about this is that while the attorneys for the plaintiffs say they want to send a message this is not acceptable, rudy giuliani has continued to say these lies that he is being sued for. after court ended, he said everything i've said about those women is true and said again that they stole the election.

what's next, he is clearly indicating he's going to appeal his decision. it's more unclear how this penalty is going to affect whether he, the former president , other people, whether this affects if they will continue to do that looking ahead to 2024. amna: fresh tragedy in the war between israel and hamas. israeli troops killed three hostages today in gaza city as israel kept up in unrelenting bombardment on gaza. as israel pounds the gaza strip with airstrikes and idf troops advance on the ground, u.s.

national security advisor jake sullivan laid out his vision for the future of a more limited war. >> there will be a transition to another phase of this war on targeting the leadership and intelligence operations. >> later in the occupied west bank, sullivan spoke with mahmoud abbas. the u.s. once the palestinian authority to help govern. a plan benjamin netanyahu rejects. >> there is disagreement about the day after hamas. i will not allow the entry into gaza about those who finance terrorism. >> abbas also expressed concern for those outside of gaza, saying the u.s. must intervene to stop israel's aggression against people in the west bank and occupied jerusalem.

the west bank has seen an uptick in violence by israeli settlers and the idf, killing at least 200 87 palestinians. the death toll in the gaza strip is quickly approaching 20,000. mourners wept for victims yet to be identified. >> no one came to confirm their identities. we hope someone comes to identify and bury them. we need people to identify their children who are dead. >> he figures -- fears there is no one left to will recognize them. israel killed three hostages who were identified today by friendly fire.

the world's largest shipping company said it is pausing all container ship traffic through the red sea indefinitely, citing safety concerns. this after repeated missile strikes on commercial vessels by rebels in yemen backed by iran who say they are targeting ships headed for israel. the attacks have renewed concerns that the war could spread into a broader regional conflict. geoff: cnn and the washington post reported that the u.s. intelligence community believes 45% of the bombs israel has dropped in gaza were unguided, as opposed to precision munitions which are much more accurate. israel says it has struck over 22,000 terror targets in gaza since the hamas attack attacks on october 7. an israeli military spokesman defended the use of unguided bombs. he said the idf strikes intelligence targets while using

high-quality munitions. the type used in each strike is according to the characteristics of the target and the effort to mitigate harm to civilians. two experts now, a retired lieutenant general with a 36 year career in the air force who played major roles in planning bombing campaigns. the chief of high-value targeting at the defense intelligence agency led teams that planned attacks. he worked for humans rights watch where he investigated attacks against civilians. what is your reaction to reports that 45% of the bombs that israel is dropping in gaza have been unguided? >> i'm really shocked.

there's three reasons you want to use precision guided munitions. destroy your target with minimal civilian harm while upholding the laws of war. nothing will do a better job of doing that than a precision guided bomb. you are looking at about a three meter error. unguided bombs could miss their targets by 100 feet. that's highly problematic. in 91, 8% of all bombs dropped on iraq were precision. in 99, 33 percent of the bombs dropped on serbia were precision. in 2002 and 2003, 65% of all bombs were precision guided for afghanistan and iraq. by libya, it was 100%. it's not just the use of unguided munitions leading to so many civilian deaths in gaza. it's the choices israel is making of not applying civilian harm mitigation, not using

smaller weapons like they could be using. this is why we are seeing upwards of 20,000 murdered palestinians right now. geoff: why is it ok for israel to use unguided bombs when the u.s. doesn't use them anymore? >> what i would tell you is the use of a weapon is highly dependent upon the effects that need to be accomplished. the collateral damage concerns regarding a particular target and the accuracy of the weapon system in its entirety, not just the bomb itself. a dumb bomb delivered by a smart aircraft can still be accurate. there are legitimate reasons to use low-cost dumb bombs. an example is hitting a weapon storage location in an area

where intelligence has determined there are no civilian casualty concerns. in other cases there are fleeting targets that don't allow for the process of obtaining coordinates for gps guided weapons or obstacles that prevent a laserguided delivery. so the pilot with a precise delivery system can quickly get to the target. i have seen the exquisite care the idf takes to avoid civilian casualties. they have extraordinarily stringent rules for avoiding collateral damage. i'm told by a very good source that israel only uses dumb bombs after they clear in area. geoff: your response to the notion that unguided bombs can be dropped in a precise way. and it is israel using these weapons because they don't have enough precision guided bombs in their arsenal? >> i certainly agree that unguided weapons can be used in

certain circumstances. we are talking about 10,000 to 15,000 unguided bombs in one of the most densely populated parts of the earth. looking at the weapons transfers , we can see that over 35 thousand guided weapons have been provided to israel in recent years and that doesn't include the weapons provided just this year, and that right now is classified. when i was in the pentagon conducting targeting for the iraq war in 2003, we were dropping munitions in baghdad and throughout different cities in iraq. at no time did i ever have a weapon here suggest that we should use an unguided munition. let's look syria, where the u.s. was involved with a lot of

aerial munitions. there's a great story, a quote from a pilot talking about how you have all these buildings around, the enemy commingled with civilians and the pilot asks, how am i supposed to fly the plane and drop a bomb down an alleyway. the answer the report comes up with is precision guided munitions. geoff: when the bombing campaign was described as indiscriminate, i imagine you would take issue with that. >> i would. it was an extraordinarily unfortunate and indiscriminate use of the term indiscriminate attacks. and i think definitions are important here. in accordance with international humanitarian law, indiscriminate attacks are defined as first, attacks which are not directed at specific military objectives. attacks which employ a means of

combat that cannot be directed at a specific military objective , or attacks which employ a means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by international humanitarian law and consequently are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction. none of these situations apply to the israeli air force. geoff: david and mark, thank you for your insights. >> i'm stephanie sy. here are the latest headlines. the congressional budget office projected inflation will slope to 2% next year, close to the federal reserve's goal and could pave the way for lower interest

rates. the cbo estimates that unemployment will rise to 4.4% by late next year. the gdp is expected to fall to 1.5 percent before rebounding in 2020 five. homelessness in the united states has soared to its highest levels on record. more than 600 50,000 people. federal data released today showed a 12% increase in january from a year earlier. the numbers are increasingly evident in chicago, denver and other cities. the culprit is sharply higher rent and the end of pandemic error assistance. -- germany, france voiced optimism despite hungary's veto of an aid package to ukraine. the hungarian prime minister is russia's closest ally in the eu.

he defended his position. >> we can say the situation in ukraine is bad, so we shouldn't send any more money to finance the war. we should stop the war and have a cease-fire and peace talks. instead of that, they want to give money to keep the war going. >> the eu aid is especially critical to ukraine with future u.s. assistance stuck in congress. the block will begin talks on letting ukraine to join. russian officials say jailed opposition leader alexei navalny has been moved from a penal colony east of moscow. his whereabouts remain unknown since his lawyer lost touch with him after december 6. moscow is digging out from one of its biggest snowstorms in 60 years. blizzard stumped eight inches on the russian capital and other parts of the country today. it amounted to more than 1/5 of

moscow's average december snowfall in 24 hours. the city could get a record of 20 inches this month. a bitter cold wave has plunged much of china to below freezing temperatures. snow blanketed beijing and disrupted highway travel and provinces across the north. president xi jinping called for an all-out emergency response. prince harry scored a victory today in his legal war with british tabloids. a london court ruled the daily mirror used phone hacking to snoop on him and awarded him 100 80,000 dollars. lawyers read a statement calling for action against publishers who abuse their power. >> today's ruling is vindicating and affirming. i have been told that slaying dragons will get you burned, but in light of today's victory and the importance of doing what is

needed for a free and honest press, it is a worthwhile price to pay. >> prince harry's testimony in the trial was the first by a british royal in more than a century. former president trump faces a new controversy over highly classified documents that disappeared as he left office. reports say it involves a binder on material of russian efforts to metal in the 2016 election. intelligence agencies are worried that secret sources and methods will be compromised. arizona governor katie hobbs ordered the national guard to the southern border today. guard troops will assist state and local law enforcement dealing with a surge of migrants. it comes as arizona's congressional delegation have sharply criticized biden administration's border policies , including the temporary closure of the lukeville border crossing this month. after matthew perry died from

the acute effects of ketamine. the medical examiner listed drowning as a secondary factor. he was found unresponsive in his hot tub at the age of 54. david brooks and ruth marcus will weigh in on the week's political headlines. and the best reads of the year. ♪ >> this is the pbs newshour from weta studios in washington. amna: the landmark supreme court decision overturning roe v. wade nearly 18 months ago upended the american landscape of reproductive rights. state laws popped up restricting abortion access. the issue became central to some elections and we have heard many stories of confusion from patients and doctors trying to understand the new limits.

geoff: a new story explains some of the internal dynamics of the court from how the justices chose to hear the case to how the decision was drafted. jodi kantor is one of the authors of that report and joins us now. any of the justices including amy coney barrett, who was picked by donald trump in part to help overturn roe initially opposed even hearing the case. what changed? >> when we were reporting the story, that was one of the big surprises because she did eventually vote to overturn the law. but voting whether to take the case or not is a different matter, and initially what she said was that she wanted to vote to hear the case but she had timing reservations. she didn't want to hear the case that term, which some of her conservative colleagues were pushing to do. she ended up changing her vote from a grant to a deny.

so it didn't make a substantive difference. you only need four votes, which justice alito had to move the case forward. it meant the case move forward with a bare minimum of the court . only four votes and they were all male justices. geoff: the justices initially voted january of 2020 one to take up the case, months before they publicly announced they would hear it. it was brett kavanaugh who pushed for a delay to create the appearance of distance from justice ruth bader ginsburg's death. why did he think that was important? >> one of the things that he cited was that he wanted to watch some other abortion courses -- cases play out in the lower courts. it pushes the case to the next term and creates the appearance of distance from justice

ginsburg's death. the court has the report to grant. the case is clearly moving forward and yet they essentially withhold the decision from the public for months. geoff: justice alito wrote the draft, you report that the other conservative justices quickly signed on to it without requesting any changes. that was his way reportedly of trying to safeguard a coalition around overturning roe. how and why did the leak of his opinion to politico in may of 2022 cement to the ruling? -- cement the ruling? >> there were extensive attempts to craft compromises. we don't know if they would have worked or what prospect they had at succeeding. chief justice john roberts, justice stephen breyer, they tried to stop the case from being heard. when it went forward, justice

roberts, and this is public. he had a 15 week compromise where he wanted to uphold the mississippi law which restricted abortion to 15 weeks, but he didn't want to overturn all of roe. even though that was a very lonely position on this court, he only needed one more vote to make that happen and in fact, justice stephen breyer was considering joining him in that position. that would have been just symbolic. if brett kavanaugh had joined that position as well, entire outcome would have been different. so the leak came just as those efforts were underway and it rendered them hopeless. justices votes are secret for a reason. they want room to change their minds, which sometimes they do before the official opinion comes out.

because everything became so public, it really cemented the results. we don't know who leaked this opinion, but we can say what the effect was, which was to lock in the final result. geoff: thanks for sharing your reporting with us. the supreme court will soon weigh in on reproductive rights again as the justices agreed this week to hear case on access to mifepristone for medication abortions, which make up more than half of abortions in this country. these decisions have immediate real-life implications. amna: the state supreme court of texas overturned a ruling that would have allowed a dallas resident to terminate her viable pregnancy. the ruling has put medical providers on the front lines of interpreting legal language while caring for their patients. we are joined by one such

provider, and ob/gyn based in austin. welcome. i want to ask you about this exception in the texas law. there is a near abortion ban in the state. the acceptance is in the case of a risk to the life of the mother. she said it was a risk, the court disagreed. they said the exception is predicated on a doctor acting within reasonable medical judgment. is makes sense to you? do you understand what the exception encompasses? >> i don't and i think that really gets to the heart of the matter. we have been set up as health care providers in a situation where every medical decision we make is being second-guessed by the legislature and judiciary. physicians are placed in a

situation where they are unsure whether what they consider to be there sound reasonable judgment would be acceptable to our attorney or judges in the state of texas. amna: here's a clip of kate cox. >> she will either die in my belly or i will carry her to term and have to deliver her stillborn, or if she arrives into this world, her life will be measured in minutes or hours or days and plagued with medical devices. she would need to be placed directly onto hospice. imagine receiving that news and caring that with the risk and complications of continuing the pregnancy and childbirth. amna: knowing the uncertainty around interpreting the law, how do you talk to your patients about this kind of thing knowing many of them will face the same thing?

>> given that there is a complete ban on abortion in texas, these conversations are really hard to have and they are not happening in the way they should and did even two years ago. listening to kate is heartbreaking because no one should ever be in that situation. doctors are having to say how sick is too sick? how close to death to somebody need to be and who is allowed to make that determination? patients aren't allowed to choose their own risk. is it a 20% risk of death that is good enough or does it need to be 70%? how much blood is too much blood for somebody to lose before we can say this is an acceptable abortion in the state of texas. it's an untenable situation. people are forced into these untenable choices they are not allowed to make.

i have the training and capacity to provide care to these people. i live here in the state of texas and i am prevented from providing essential medical care to patients based on my judgment and the patient's desires by my state. amna: there's the mission to serve your patients and legal risk. what has the conversation been like among other ob/gyn's in texas? >> a culture of fear exists now. people aren't sure what is safe to say to their patients, unsure what kind of care they can offer their patients and they are afraid that if they offer the standard of care, they will be punished, lose their license, their livelihood, their family will suffer. on the others, the patient suffers even more. you go into medicine to help people. to be held back from that is

really devastating as a provider. we have seen in this case is the state is determined to prevent us from practicing safe medicine. we see that with the c attney general sent to the hospitals and the physician threatening them if they were to proceed with the standard of care. it's going to continue to harm people in ways we can't even imagine at this point. amna: texas is not alone in its abortion restrictions. 15 other states have near-total bands. the arizona supreme court just heard arguments about a supreme court ban. do you consult and compare notes with doctors and other states? >> i belong to an amazing community of providers across the country.

in some ways it feels like a race to the bottom. the focus is always on the care that our patients need and what we can still do to help them in the face of all these restrictions. our patients are terrified. my colleagues are telling me that patients are leaving their phones behind when they travel across state lines to get abortion care because they are afraid they will be tracked and punished for seeking health care. that's the environment we live in. amna: thank you so much. ♪ the house takes a formal step

toward impeaching the president and the caucus kickoff to 2020 for his race for the presidency is less than 30 days away. that brings us to the analysis of david brooks and ruth marcus. jonathan capehart is away. rudy giuliani has been ordered to pay georgia election workers almost 150 million dollars for defamation. what do you make of that? >> it's deserved. he ripped their lives to shreds with a tweet and all the lies that went on. i think these big penalties are meant to send a message and they are sending a message. the larger story is whatever happened to rudy giuliani. he was smart. believe me, he had corks. he was gladiatorial. but he was not the guy we see now. it's one of the most remarkable

transformations i have ever seen in journalism. what gets routed when you are desperate for relevance? i was having lunch with michael kelly decades ago and there were former officials across the restaurant he pointed to them and said, look, a powerless lunch. they formerly held power and then they had no power. i think that's what ate giuliani's soul assurance. >> couldn't agree more. but he did have power, to destroy their lives. i wish he could be summoned to pay the money. the amount is going to be reduced. he doesn't have it. no amount of money can make up for what they suffered. he is so shameless, he continued to defame them outside the court even as the trial was going on. he's not going to have a comfortable retirement and he shouldn't. couldn't happen to nicer guy,

and i mean that sarcastically. amna: this is happening at a time of rising threats against election workers. many of them leaving their roles because they don't want to deal with it anymore. senate negotiators working to pass a foreign aid bill, held up on border policy talks. senator schumer saying the senate will come back next week. democrats are clearly incentivized. our republicans equally? >> nope. they love having the immigration issue. they have less urgency. i still somehow think it's going to get done. it just makes so much sense. and everybody gets something important they want. the democrats absolutely have to address the border. they are getting hammered on it. ukraine has to happen.

the hard part is sometimes when you get 60 votes in the senate -- you're going to get 30 republicans and 30 democrats, both sides are going to lose a lot of people. we have seen bipartisan deals before. doing a 3030 deal is super hard to do, let alone immigration, the issue we have not made progress on since 1986. the logic behind this deal is so strong to me, i suspect they will eventually get it done. you don't hear a lot of optimism right now. amna: biden is taking a lot of heat for many of these proposed immigration concessions. is he going to lose members of the same coalition that put him into office? >> there is logic on both sides. on the republican side, i have a slightly different answer.

many republicans and particularly senate republicans are very incentivized to get the ukraine funding including senator mcconnell, and they know that border security has to be a piece of this. the problem is getting it through the house. you have to convince house republicans that democrats were dragged into this kicking and screaming. to a certain extent, the administration and advocates of getting this across the line benefit from the yelps you are hearing from the left right now. but house republicans have very mixed motives. they like border security as an issue perhaps more than they like border security as a solution. from the president's point of view, he has a problem on the left and people will be yelling at the end of this process, but

he has a bigger political problem, which is order security is a very motivating issue for voters he has to get on his side if this gives him an excuse to do something he wouldn't have the political freedom to do otherwise and say i took helps -- steps to help solve this. amna: it was pretty does that take it away from republicans as a political cudgel next year? >> we are not going to solve the border. in 2020, a lot of the activist groups and democratic politicians on the primary debate stage basically wanted to decriminalize the border. if they had gone there, donald trump would have won that election. for joe biden to be not quite as

progressive on the border is a political most. >> and the border situation has gotten much worse. he does really need to do something. girl, the republican conference voted to open an official impeachment inquiry into president biden. we have seen a slight increase in approval for them to move forward on that in the last couple of months. by december, 48% disapproved, 49% approved. hunter biden defied a republican subpoena to testify privately. here's what he had to say about this on wednesday. >> let me state as clearly as i can, my father was not financially involved in my business, not as a practicing lawyer, not as a board member, not in my partnership with a

chinese private businessmen, not in my investments at home or abroad and certainly not as an artist. amna: there is no evidence licking the president to any wrongdoing yet. why move ahead with this vote? >> it's easy to do an inquiry. a lot of republicans say, there's no reason for impeachment. the inquiry was already going on, so this just continues what was already happening. a lot of republicans are like, fine, let them have their inquiry. amna: when you say let them you mean? >> jim jordan. i met hundreds of people on bookstores and talked about ukraine and the border. how many people have asked me about hunter biden. amna: how many? >> zero. people have bigger things to worry about. >> my take is the republican

base is not going to david brooks's book events. i'm harsher about this impeachment inquiry. this is a shameful misuse of the impeachment power and process. michael gerhardt was on this program the other night talking about how there had never been a formal impeachment inquiry in american history in the absence of credible evidence of wrongdoing. we are looking, it's a hunt for high crimes and misdemeanors without evidence. once you get this official ball rolling, how do you stop from giving into the demands for a vote for articles of impeachment? and then you put the 18 or so republicans in districts that biden won against trump in a terrible position. they are either going to invite depending on the timing their

base to primary them if they don't vote for it, or they will have their general electorate mad at them when they are trying to get reelected. the only smart politics of this are to assuage trump and the base, but it's not to protect your majority. amna: 30 days to go until the iowa caucus. feels like a good time to remind people about many of the candidates who are still running. this are trump is up 32 points -- mr. trump is up 32 points. still running, ron desantis, nikki haley, chris christie, h's -- asa hutchinson. do you see anything in that field changing between now and when the iowa caucuses begin? >> probably not. once campaigning starts in iowa, than the numbers will start to move around.

if anything, donald trump is doing even better. one of the little statistics that leapt out at me is iowans who have never been to a caucus. trump was winning by 62% or 63%. he's bringing in new people. he just looks very formidable in iowa. >> he's got an operation for how to run the caucuses that was very amateurish last time around and that is much better now. it's kind of a preview of heaven forbid a second trump term. he's getting smarter at doing this. i don't think there's any reason to expect he's not going to win the caucuses and be the republican nominee. amna: there was a conversation about eventually if enough people wanted to stop him from

becoming the nominee, they had to drop out and coalesced behind a single candidate. >> in iowa, he is up over 50%. i think it would be useful for chris christie to drop out and give nikki haley some kind of shot. it's a rerun of 2016. the other republicans are not attacking him. it's all the collective action problems we saw in 2016. it's a rerun. they have run -- learned nothing. >> politicians don't win if they drop out, and they are worrying about themselves first. and it wouldn't make a difference. amna: always good to see you both. thank you so much. geoff: with the holidays upon us, you may be hunting for gifts for the book in your life. jeffrey brown speaks to two

newshour regulars for our arts and culture series, canvas. >> joined me again, two top readers and reviewers. gilbert crews and maureen corrigan of npr. nice to see both of you again. let's start with fiction. give us two. >> it's been a great year. alice mcdermott's absolution. she usually writes about my people, working class background irish catholics. >> you are not biased. >> this time she takes those characters and puts them in vietnam in 1963. the main character is a newlywed who is pulled into this group of women doing charitable works in vietnam while their husbands are busy doing something else, and without being heavy-handed, she

manages to make a connection between the charity of these women and early american intervention in vietnam. >> because that something else turns out to be the vietnam war. >> you gave it away. one of the other books, the heaven and earth grocery store by james mcbride. he is one of our most nuanced but clear eyed writers about race. this is set in pottstown, pennsylvania in 1925 in a historically immigrant jewish neighborhood and african-american. and i will stop there. it's amazing. >> two novels? >> one of my favorite books of the year was a book called the bee sting by paul murray. he is an irish author, his book was shortlisted for the booker prize. it's a family saga about four family members who were riding

high on the hog in the 2008 financial crisis when it hits ireland, and it's a book that digs deep down into their internal lives, there are sections that go between all of the different characters. it's a book about the unknow ability of people that you love. you can live with someone a very long time and not get to know them because you can never truly know a person. it's funny, sad, tragic. you fall in love with the characters. the second one is called northwoods by daniel mason. it is set over 300 years. it focuses on a plot of land in western massachusetts. it takes you through three centuries and gives you all these different characters. through these characters, he writes through several different

genres and literary styles. it's constantly surprising and a delight to read. >> all of these books have a lot of history as well as family life to them. how about nonfiction? >> the wager by david grand. he is having such a big year with killers of the flower moon. this work of narrative history is about as traditional as you get. it's about a shipwreck, a mutiny, survival on a rocky island. a bunch of british sailors are on a ship called the wager which breaks apart in a storm in 1741 off the coast of patagonia. for a while they survive on this island and then a group of the sailors patches together a rickety vessel and sales 2500 miles to brazil and that's only part of the story. and then safia sinclair's memoir

how to save babylon was outstanding. it tells a familiar story about breaking out of a repressive childhood context into a wider world. she grew up in a strict rastafarian household. she's a lovely writer, she's a poet and her nature descriptions of jamaica along with everything else are really stunning. >> two nonfiction. >> i have to second maureen's recommendation. master slave husband-wife is a piece of historical narrative nonfiction about a couple in 1848 in georgia, they are enslaved. right before christmas they decide to escape. they do this by disguising the wife who is a light-skinned

african-american as a wealthy white man and her husband acts as her servant and they make this four-day journey, it's very tense, it's amazingly researched. you get a peek into their lives after they make it to the north, the way they got involved in antislavery advocacy. it's a historical drama, a love story that reads like a novel. it's quite amazing. the second nonfiction book is called fire whether set in present times, it is a climate change book. it's ostensibly about the 2016 fort mcmurray wildfire which took place in canada. fort mcmurray is an oil boom town. it has made great wealth for people based on extraction of oil from the ground. that extraction has led to climate change and that climate change has led to a giant wildfire that resulted in the evacuation of almost 100

thousand people in 20 16. it reads like a novel. it mixes a beat by people -- beat by beat account of the wildfire with historical accounts. >> are you seeing any trends either in your own reading or the writing coming across your desk. >> we are living in a time that's very much like the 30's. our literary fiction is very much centered on social issues and social problems. i thought it was interesting that some novels i wouldn't have expected to see social issues crop up in, especially reproductive rights. all of a sudden, those novels veered into an abortion-rights plot which was megan abbott's suspense novel beware the women and the novel tom lake had that.

we are very much socially conscious and our arts these days. >> there are tons of historical fiction novels out there. this genre continues to grow. to mention a book, tom lake is one of at least three books set during the pandemic that came out this summer and fall. i think we will continue to see books set during the pandemic and then there is the sub genre that has been around for a while which is romantasy. the author rebecca euros with her books, fourth wing and iron flame really dominated the bestseller list this year. >> some of the best books of the

year, thank you very much. geoff: you can check out the full book list on pbs.org/newshour. amna: more online including the challenges faced by the only mental health hotline specifically for and operated by transgender people. tune in to washington week with the atlantic tonight. our guest moderator and his panel discussed the convergence of political problems that could hinder president biden's reelection. geoff: a look at why pope francis advocating for church reform is creating divisions between some conservative american catholics and the vatican. and that is the newshour for tonight. i'm geoff bennett. amna: i'm amna nawaz's. thank you for joining us.

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wow, you get to watch all your favorite stuff. it's to die for. now you won't miss a thing. this is the way. the xfinity 10g network. made for streaming. >> president biden stocked by a slew of problems, domestic, foreign, and his son. >> we have to addddress the southern border as part of a national security package. >> that is linked to our national security. >>