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New Nonfiction February 2026 |
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Ain't Nobody's Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton
by Martha Ackmann
A larger-than-life new biography of country music legend and philanthropist Dolly Parton.In Ain't Nobody's Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton, Martha Ackmann chronicles the life of an American Original. From her impoverished childhood in the Smoky Mountains to international stardom as a singer, songwriter, actress, businesswoman, and philanthropist, Dolly Parton has exceeded everyone's expectations except her own. During a time when the Beatles set the standard for contemporary music, Dolly appeared on a local country music television show that her high school classmates thought was pure cornpone. The day after her high school graduation, she boarded a bus for Nashville, but record executives turned her down. One said her voice sounded like a screech owl. When Dolly finally got her foot in the door, her talent and focus catapulted her to the top of country charts, the pop world, and movie stardom. Yet her success came at a price. Shunned by many in Nashville who saw her ambition as a betrayal of her country music roots, Dolly became the target of death threats, lawsuits, and a judge who threatened to throw her in jail. She nearly collapsed on-stage and later succumbed to depression that pushed her to the brink, but she refused to be counted out and came back stronger than ever developing Dollywood, the amusement park that became the economic engine of East Tennessee, and founding the Imagination Library that provides free books to children around the world. Her philanthropy to health organizations led to creation of the Moderna COVID vaccine. And, finally, she returned to her roots, recording bluegrass albums that became the most celebrated of her unparalleled 60-year career. Ain't Nobody's Fool is a deep dive into the social, historical, and personal forces that made Dolly Parton one of the most beloved and unifying figures in public life and includes interviews with friends, family members, school mates, Nashville neighbors, members of her band, studio musicians, producers, and many others. It also features never before seen photographs and unearthed documents shedding light on her family's hardscrabble life. More than anything, Martha Ackmann's fresh and animated new book proves Dolly Parton knows just who she is and she ain't nobody's fool.
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Googoosh: A Sinful Voice
by Googoosh
Before there was Madonna or Beyoncé, there was Googoosh. For the first time, one of the biggest pop stars of the 20th century tells her remarkable story: her rise to fame in pre-revolution Iran, her arrest and imprisonment, her twenty-year exile, and finally, her triumphant return to the global stage. My story is not only my story. It's about our past, my country, how it was, what it became, what happened to the people, to artists. What would happen to a country's biggest pop star if religious extremists took control? In the wake of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, singer Googoosh found out. She was ordered by her government to never sing again, and for twenty years, she didn't...until she did. Now, in this lyrical and moving memoir, pop superstar Googoosh unveils her unforgettable journey. From her difficult upbringing in Iran's tumultuous 1950s and '60s to her stardom in the '70s, she reveals what it was like to reach the peak of her career just as the 1979 Islamic Revolution swept the country. Seemingly overnight, she went from being on magazine covers, at film premieres and fashion shows, and constantly on the radio, to targeted by religious clerics. What followed is a harrowing tale of oppression, intimidation, and exile. After more than twenty years--forbidden to sing or speak out--she found her voice at the turn of the millennium, once again on the international stage. Now, inspired by the brave women of Iran on the front lines fighting for their freedoms, Googoosh finally tells her full story, and with it, the story of a country once again on the brink.
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The Great Resistance: The 400-Year Fight to End Slavery in the Americas
by Carrie Gibson
For more than four centuries, enslaved people across the Americas, from the United States and the Caribbean to Brazil, fought any way they could to gain their freedom. For the first time, their dramatic stories are gathered in one sweeping narrative that offers a message of inspiration in our own time.Among the emancipators are the millions whose stories will never be known. They lived the struggle. They were the great resistance. Thus does acclaimed historian Carrie Gibson conclude her magisterial chronicle of four centuries of effort by enslaved people in the western hemisphere to gain their freedom. Freedom is an idea, she writes, and the actions of the thousands who fought to escape slavery made clear that freedom had to be for everyone, otherwise it was a lie.The horrific enslavement by Europeans of twelve million Africans taken to the Americas has been widely written about, and important individual slave revolts have been recorded; but Gibson tells a larger story, portraying the multitude of freedom struggles across the entire hemisphere--from North America to the Caribbean to Brazil--as one long-running quest for freedom. From the first African revolt in 1521 on the island of Hispaniola, to the 18th-century Maroon Wars on Jamaica and the revolution that gave Haiti its independence, and thousands of smaller acts of defiance in between, Gibson vividly chronicles the continuum of resistance that eventually ended the slave trade and, with Brazil's decision in 1888, the institution of slavery itself.This was the most diverse ongoing insurrection the world has ever known, and the way it was responded to shaped every nation in the Americas in meaningful ways. If scholars were to emphasize the efforts of the enslaved more than the condition of slavery, historian Vincent Brown has written, we might at least tell richer stories about how the endeavors of the weakest and most abject have at times reshaped the world. With its deep scholarship and rich narrative, The Great Resistance is a major contribution to the literature around slavery and freedom and, in our time, a tribute to the persistence of the human spirit to overcome even the darkest of circumstances.
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Poppy State: A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings
by Myriam Gurba
In addition to serving as structural anchors, 20 featured plants will function as portals into Gurba's life, summoning memory, magic, nightmare, myth, indigenous knowledge, cultural critique, social commentary, pedagogical philosophy, and history. Each vignette will focus on one of California's native plants, including: California live oak, thistle, golden poppy, grape, California flannel bush, Monterrey cypress, and Monterrey pine. A few non-natives, such as boysenberry, orange, and water hyacinth, might also appear. The book will explore the relationship with Gurba's father-who she calls a former Chippie (Chicano hippie) turned anxious workaholic, and who introduced Gurba to native plants as a child via their California xeriscape garden-and how her deeply ingrained knowledge of plants has grounded her in every aspect of her life.
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Lab Dog: A Beagle and His Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research
by Melanie D. G. Kaplan
When journalist Melanie D.G. Kaplan adopted her beagle Hammy, all she knew was that he had spent nearly four years in a research lab. Curious to know more about this gentle creature's past, as well as the broader world of animal research, Kaplan-with Hammy in tow-embarks on a quest for answers. How did Hammy end up in a research facility? Why are we still using millions of animals a year in experiments? What have we learned from them? Is there another way? In Lab Dog, Kaplan investigates the breeding and use of beagles for biomedical research, drug and product testing, and education. She takes readers on a journey, peeking behind laboratory doors and visiting with researchers, activists, ethicists, veterinarians, lawmakers, and innovators. Along the way, she finds thoughtful and caring humans on all sides of the debate, explores promising developments in nonanimal testing, and discovers puzzle pieces from Hammy's past. Equal parts journalism and love story, Lab Dog offers a nuanced view on our relationship with a species that we both love and exploit, and a reason to hope for a better future for all.
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Undammed: Freeing Rivers and Bringing Communities to Life
by Tara Lohan
Free-flowing rivers in the United States are an endangered species. We've dammed and diverted almost every major river, straightening curves and blocking passage for fish and other aquatic animals, pushing many to the brink. Now a heartening new movement is helping to demolish harmful or obsolete structures, restoring new life to rivers and communities that depend on them. In doing so, it offers a pathway to undoing environmental harm to nature--and to ourselves. In Undammed, environmental journalist Tara Lohan makes a case for the unexpected benefits of dam removal. By restoring rivers, she argues, we're protecting our own communities by increasing climate resilience, improving water quality, enhancing public safety, and boosting fish populations that feed people and restore rights for Native American Tribes. Undammed is an inspirational look at our changing relationship with the natural world, showing the cascade of benefits that come when we no longer turn our backs on rivers.
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A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature
by Adam Morgan
Wholly transportive and spellbinding. I was beguiled. --Ling Ma, bestselling author of Severance and Bliss Montage A fascinating account of a remarkable woman dangerously ahead of her time. --Kevin Kwan, bestselling author of Crazy Rich Asians Exquisitely researched, deeply felt, and poignant. This one belongs on your shelf. --Sarah Rose Etter, author of Ripe and The Book of The life and times of literary pioneer and queer icon Margaret C. Anderson, who risked everything to be the first to publish James Joyce's Ulysses in America. Perfect for fans of The Editor, Flapper, and Nasty Women. Already under fire for publishing the literary avant-garde into a world not ready for it, Margaret C. Anderson's cutting-edge magazine The Little Review was a bastion of progressive politics and boundary-pushing writing from then-unknowns like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, and Djuna Barnes. And as its publisher, Anderson was a target. From Chicago to New York and Paris, this fearless agitator helmed a woman-led publication that pushed American culture forward and challenged the sensibilities of early 20th century Americans dismayed by its salacious writing and advocacy for supposed extremism like women's suffrage, access to birth control, and LBGTQ rights. But then it went too far. In 1921, Anderson found herself on trial and labeled a danger to the minds of young girls by a government seeking to shut her down. Guilty of having serialized James Joyce's masterpiece Ulysses in her magazine, Anderson was now not just a publisher but also a scapegoat for regressives seeking to impose their will on a world on the brink of modernization. Author, journalist, and literary critic Adam Morgan brings Anderson and her journal to life anew in A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls, capturing a moment of cultural acceleration and backlash all too familiar today while shining light on an unsung heroine of American arts and letters. Bringing a fresh eye to a woman and a movement misunderstood in their time, this biography highlights a feminist counterculture that audaciously pushed for more during a time of extreme social conservatism and changed the face of American literature and culture forever.
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24 Hours at the Capitol: An Oral History of the January 6th Insurrection
by Nora Neus
The 24 Hours in Charlottesville author offers a minute-by-minute account of the January 6 riots through never-before-heard stories of those who were there Neus goes beyond mainstream reporting to reveal important truths about the US white nationalist movement This bracing account reconstructs what it was actually like in and around the Capitol during those 24 hours. Lawmakers recount donning gas masks and being evacuated to safe rooms. Police officers recall insurrectionists screaming at them and calling them traitors. Staffers remember walking over pools of blood as they ran for their lives. A young Asian-American staffer recalls locking herself in a room just feet from the rioters, mentally preparing to be raped. A mostly Black janitorial staff began cleaning the blood of insurrectionists off the marble floor on the Capitol before the building was even officially secured. Neus's sources include original interviews, court documents, firsthand accounts, the US Capitol Historical Society's oral history project on the insurrection, and the work of Tim Heaphy, chief investigator of the congressional January 6 Select Committee. January 6 was largely planned right out in the open, but lawmakers and government officials underestimated the threat in part because it was coming from white people. Neus examines the underlying racial implications of not only the attack itself, but also in the planning and coordination of the response.
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Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic
by Kenneth R. Rosen
A gripping blend of travelogue and frontline reporting that reveals how climate change, military ambition, and economic opportunity are transforming the Arctic into the epicenter of a new cold war, where a struggle for dominance between the planet's great powers heralds the next global conflict. Russian spies. Nuclear submarines. Sabotaged pipelines. Undersea communications severed in the dark of night. The fastest-warming place on earth--where apartment buildings, hospitals, and homes crumble daily as permafrost melts and villages get washed away by rising seas--the Arctic stands at the crossroads of geopolitical ambition and environmental catastrophe. As climate change thaws the northern latitudes, opening once ice-bound shipping lanes and access to natural resources, the world's military powers are rushing to stake their claims in this increasingly strategic region. We've entered a new cold war--and every day it grows hotter. In Polar War, Kenneth R. Rosen takes readers on an extraordinary journey across the changing face of the far north. Through intimate portraits of scientists, soldiers, and Indigenous community leaders representing the interests of twenty-one countries across four continents, he witnesses firsthand how rising temperatures and growing tensions are reshaping life above and below the Arctic Circle. He finds himself on the trail of Navy SEALs training for arctic warfare, embarks on Coast Guard patrols monitoring Russian incursions, participates in close-quarter-combat training aboard foreign icebreakers in the Arctic sea ice, and visits remote research stations where international cooperation is giving way to espionage and the search for long-frozen biological weapons. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and three years of reporting from the frontlines of climate change and great power competition, Rosen blends incisive analysis with the vivid immediacy of a travelogue. His deeply researched and personal accounts capture the diverse landscapes, people, and conflicted interests that define this complex northern region. The result is both an elegy for a vanishing landscape and an urgent warning about how the race for Arctic dominance could spark the next global conflict.
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Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America's New Age of Disaster
by Jacob Soboroff
A revelatory and searingly immediate report from the frontlines of the firestorm that consumed Los Angeles, from the MS NOW correspondent and New York Times bestselling author of Separated, who covered the fires on the ground as an LA native.On the morning of January 7, 2025, a message pinged the phone of Jacob Soboroff, a national correspondent for MS NOW. Big Palisades fire. We are evacuating, his brother texted within minutes of the blaze engulfing the hillside behind the home where he and his pregnant wife were living. Really bad. An attached photo showed a huge black plume rising from behind the house, an umbrella of smoke towering over everything they owned. Jacob rushed to the office of the bureau chief.I should go. I grew up in the Palisades.Soon he was on the front line of the blaze--his first live report of what would turn out to be weeks covering unimaginable destruction, from both the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire, in Altadena. In the days to come, Soboroff appeared across the networks of NBC News as Los Angeles was ablaze, met with displaced residents and workers, and pressed Governor Gavin Newsom in an interview on Meet the Press. But no story Soboroff has covered at home or abroad--the trauma of family separation at the border, the displacement of the war in Ukraine, the collapse of order in Haiti--could have prepared him for reporting live as the hallmarks of his childhood were engulfed in flames around him while his hometown burned to the ground.But for Soboroff, questions remained after the fires were controlled: what had he just witnessed? How could it have happened? Is it inevitable something like it will happen again? This set Soboroff off on months of reporting--with firefighters, fire victims, political leaders, academics, earth scientists, wildlife biologists, meteorologists and more--that made him keenly aware of how the misfortune of seeing his past carbonize was also a form of time travel into the dystopian world his children will inhabit. This is because the 2025 LA fires were not an isolated tragedy, but rather they are a harbinger--the fire of the future, in the words of one senior emergency--management official.Firestorm is the story of the costliest wildfire in American history, the people it affected and the deeply personal connection to one journalist covering it. It is a love letter to Los Angeles, a yearning to understand the fires, and why America's new age of disaster we are living through portends that--without a reckoning of how Los Angeles burned--there is more yet, and worse, to come.
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The Breath of the Gods: The History and Future of the Wind
by Simon Winchester
New York Times bestselling author Simon Winchester returns with a thought-provoking history of the wind, written in his edifying and entertaining style.What is going on with our atmosphere? The headlines are filled with news of devastating hurricanes, murderous tornadoes, and cataclysmic fires affecting large swaths of America. Gale force advisories are issued on a regular basis by the National Weather Service.In 2022, a report was released by atmospheric scientists at the University of Northern Illinois, warning that winds--the force at the center of all these dangerous natural events--are expected to steadily increase in the years ahead, strengthening in power, speed, and frequency.While this prediction worried the insurance industry, governmental leaders, scientists, and conscientious citizens, one particular segment of society received it with unbridled enthusiasm. To the energy industry, rising wind strength and speeds as an unalloyed boon for humankind--a vital source of clean and safe power.Between these two poles--wind as a malevolent force, and wind as savior of our planet--lies a world of fascination, history, literature, science, poetry, and engineering which Simon Winchester explores with the curiosity and vigor that are the hallmarks of his bestselling works. In The Breath of the Gods, he explains how wind plays a part in our everyday lives, from airplane or car travel to the natural disasters that are becoming more frequent and regular.The Breath of the Gods is an urgently-needed portrait across time of that unseen force--unseen but not unfelt--that respects no national borders and no vessel or structure in its path. Wind, the movement of the air, is seen by so many as a heavenly creation and generally a thing of essential goodness. But when it flexes its invisible muscles, all should take care and be very afraid.
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One Aladdin Two Lamps
by Jeanette Winterson
Enchanting, unexpected and razor-sharp. Jeanette Winterson and Shahrazad are the perfect co-pilots to take us into new worlds on the wings of old stories.--Kamila Shamsie, award-winning author of Home FireI can change the story because I am the story.One of the most daring and inventive writers of our time (Elle) weaves together memoir, manifesto, and a feminist reimagining of One Thousand and One Nights in this impassioned exploration of the power of readingA woman is filibustering for her life. Every night she tells a story. Every morning, she lives one more day. One Aladdin Two Lamps cracks open the legendary story of Shahrazad in One Thousand and One Nights to explore new and ancient questions. Who should we trust? Is love the most important thing in the world? Does it matter whether you are honest? What makes us happy?In her guise as Aladdin--the orphan who changes his world--Jeanette Winterson asks us to reread what we think we know. To look again. Especially to look again at how fiction works in our lives, giving us the courage to change our own narratives and alter endings we wish to subvert. As a young working-class woman, with no obvious future beyond factory work or marriage, Winterson realizes through the power of books that she can read herself as fiction as well as a fact: I can change the story because I am the story.An alluring blend of the ancient and the contemporary, One Aladdin Two Lamps ingeniously explores stories and their vital role in our lives. Weaving together fiction, magic, and memoir, Winterson's newest is a tribute to the age-old tradition of storytelling and a radical step into the future--an invitation to look closer at our stories, and thereby ourselves, to imagine the world anew.
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Hated by All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind
by Jason Zengerle
From a seasoned political journalist, an eye-opening examination of Tucker Carlson's rise through conservative media and politics, and his ideological transformation over the past thirty years, tracking the concurrent shifts in the political and media landscapes which have both influenced and succumbed to the hyperpartisan politics of today. To many, Tucker Carlson is synonymous with modern conservative politics. Carlson has been present on our screens for almost three decades and is as infamous for his bow tie as he is for his increasingly extreme right-wing views. But those who knew Carlson in his earlier days in political journalism remember a very different man--a serious and gifted writer and commentator who enjoyed debating with liberal friends and calling out conservative failures in equal measure. Now after watching Carlson turn away from measured reporting, while simultaneously gaining unparalleled power in Donald Trump's Republican Party, most are left asking, What the hell happened to Tucker? New York Times Magazine writer Jason Zengerle's rich and evocative character study of Carlson tells the story of how the former Fox News talking head rose through the ranks of conservative media, from his early days as a young writer at The Weekly Standard to his current perch as one of the most powerful voices in right-wing politics. Through deep reporting and a sweeping view of the political and media landscapes over the past thirty years, Zengerle reveals how Carlson's career offers a unique lens into the radical transformation of American conservatism and, just as importantly, the media that covers and ultimately shapes it. As conservative news outlets fight daily over who can report the most disreputable stories, and clicks and views take precedence over facts and substance, Carlson's evolution tells the larger story of how the right has radicalized and taken the media with it.
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Morton Grove Public Library
6140 Lincoln Ave
Morton Grove, Illinois 60053
(847) 965-4220www.mgpl.org |
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