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Biography and Memoir February 2026 |
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| Ain't Nobody's Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton by Martha AckmannMartha Ackmann’s biography of country music legend Dolly Parton goes beyond the glamour to reveal the grit that propelled her to international stardom. Parton’s phenomenal talent was discovered while she was a teenager. Her business savvy and philanthropic generosity would be discovered later, namely by sexist Nashville executives trying to control her skyrocketing career. For the story of another feminist music star who refused to be put in a box, try Madonna: A Rebel Life by Mary Gabriel. |
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| A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to... by Adam MorganAmerican editor Margaret C. Anderson was a champion of early modernists including Djuna Barnes and James Joyce, giving their experimental works voice in her upstart literary journal The Little Review. Critic Adam Morgan documents her fierce advocacy of the arts, romances with various high-profile women, and independence from the 20th-century status quo. Readers will savor this “enlightening depiction of a[n]…influential figure of both modernism and queer history” (Publishers Weekly). |
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Joan Crawford: A Woman's Face
by Scott Eyman
Film historian and acclaimed New York Times bestselling biographer Scott Eyman has written the definitive biography of Hollywood icon Joan Crawford, drawing on never-before-seen documents and photos from the Crawford estate.
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| One Aladdin, Two Lamps by Jeanette WintersonProlific novelist and essayist Jeanette Winterson considers the richness of storytelling traditions using One Thousand and One Nights as a guide. Amidst examples of tales spun by Shahrazad that draw parallels with the author’s experiences and the real world, Winterson holds out hope for humanity, expressed through our seemingly inexhaustible imagination. This is an original, thought-provoking work in the vein of Jane Hirshfield’s Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World. |
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Focus on: Black History Month
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Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad
by Matthew F. Delmont
The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, written by civil rights expert and Dartmouth history professor Matthew Delmont. Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Without their crucial contributions to the war effort, the United States could not have won the war. In a time when the questions World War II raised regarding race and democracy in America remain troublingly relevant and still unanswered, this meticulously researched retelling makes for urgently necessary reading.
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Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
by Margot Lee Shetterly
Before John Glenn orbited the earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of four exceptionally talented African American women--Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South's segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II. Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam's call, moving to Hampton, Virginia and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory.
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John Lewis: A Life
by David Greenberg
A comprehensive, authoritative biography of Civil Rights icon John Lewis, 'the conscience of the Congress,' drawing on interviews with Lewis and approximately 275 others who knew him at various stages of his life, as well as never-before-used FBI files and documents
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Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird
by Gene Andrew Jarrett
A major poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was one of the first African American writers to garner international recognition in the wake of emancipation. In this definitive biography, the first full-scale life of Dunbar in half a century, Gene Andrew Jarrett offers a revelatory account of a writer whose Gilded Age celebrity as the poet laureate of his race hid the private struggles of a man who, in the words of his famous poem, felt like a caged bird that sings. Beautifully written, meticulously researched, and generously illustrated, this biography presents the richest, most detailed, and most nuanced portrait yet of Dunbar and his work, transforming how we understand the astonishing life and times of a central figure in American literary history.
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Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement
by Tarana Burke
The founder and activist behind one of the largest movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries--the #MeToo movement--Tarana Burke debuts a ... memoir about her own journey to saying those two simple yet infinitely powerful words ... and how she brought empathy back to an entire generation in one of the largest cultural events in American history.
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