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Books in the National Media December 2025 |
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There's Always Next Year
by Leah Johnson
Told in two voices, Andy, a serious journalism student adamant about reinventing herself, and her influencer cousin, Dominique, who is on the verge of securing a major deal, navigate their own respective love stories over the New Year. Featured on Good Morning America.
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The Accomplice: A Novel
by Curtis Jackson
The first Black female Texas Ranger, Nia Adams goes up against a Vietnam vet turned thief who steals secrets of the rich and powerful and blackmails them for millions, working to expose him and the criminal enterprise he works for, putting her life and career on the line as the body count rises. Featured on The Sherri Shepherd Show.
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Half Baked Harvest Quick & Cozy: A Cookbook
by Tieghan Gerard
Mega-bestselling author Tieghan Gerard is busier than ever--always creating recipes, taking photographs, and collaborating with friends. In her fourth cookbook, she returns with a collection of more than 120 recipes that reflect the way she cooks now: simple ingredients, easy to get on the table, short on time yet big on flavor. Having cooked for her large family from a young age, Tieghan loves the feeling of sharing great food--and now she wants to share that feeling with you. This collection leans into the comfort food she's known for, but with an eye toward getting it ready in a hurry. With many recipes doable in one pot or pan, most in under forty-five minutes, and a more-is-more focus on flavor (but not ingredients), you'll be feasting fast. Start your day with Maple Bacon Pancakes with Bourbon Maple Syrup, snack on Cheesy Roasted Shallot Bread, and make Garlic Butter Steak Bites with Bang Bang Sauce your family's new favorite. Enjoy delicious twists like Sheet Pan Mac & Cheese with All the Crispy Edges, and, of course, finish it all off with something sweet, like a Dark Chocolate Pistachio Cake with Cream Cheese Icing. Relying on basic ingredients and Tieghan's signature knack for making sauces and dressings that you'll want to double to keep on hand at all times, these recipes will make your meals feel like a warm hug. If you've ever needed a belly full of comfort and a plate bursting with fresh, unexpected flavors--and wanted it all right now--Half Baked Harvest Quick & Cozy is for you. Featured on Good Morning America.
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The Problem with Plastic: How We Can Save Ourselves and Our Planet Before It's Too Late
by Judith Enck
Once a marvel of modern science, plastic has become so inextricably woven into our lives that imagining a world without it can seem impossible. Over the last seventy-five years, plastic has cradled our planet in a synthetic embrace. The Problem with Plastic critically examines the paradox of this material, first celebrated for its innovations and now recognized for its devastating environmental and public health impacts. With clarity and urgency, the book reveals how plastic pollution contributes to poisoned oceans, polluted air, a warming planet, and overwhelming waste, disproportionately impacting marginalized communities who bear the brunt of petrochemical pollution. Revealing the alarming extent of microplastics infiltrating both the natural world and the human body, this compelling narrative challenges the illusion that recycling alone will save us. It unpacks the mechanisms of environmental racism and the deceptive greenwashing strategies used by the plastics industry to maintain the status quo. More than a critique, The Problem with Plastic emphasizes the urgent need for action against plastic's toxic legacy. It highlights powerful stories of frontline resistance in places like Louisiana, Texas, and Appalachia, and equips readers with practical tools--including a Household Waste Audit to track and reduce plastic consumption, as well as model policy guides for driving legislative change. Urgent, eye-opening, and ultimately empowering, The Problem with Plastic reminds us: plastic is a problem--but together, we can be the solution. Featured on Marketplace.
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The Uncool: A Memoir
by Cameron Crowe
Cameron Crowe was an unlikely rock and roll insider. Born in 1957 to parents who strictly banned the genre from their house, he dove headfirst into the world of music. By the time he graduated high school at fifteen, Crowe was contributing to Rolling Stone. His parents became believers, uneasily allowing him to interview and tour with legends like Led Zeppelin; Lynyrd Skynyrd; Bob Dylan; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; and Fleetwood Mac. The Uncool offers a front-row ticket to the 1970s, a golden era for music and art when rock was young. There's no such thing as a media junket--just the rare chance a young writer might be invited along for an adventure. Crowe spends his teens politely turning down the drugs and turning on his tape recorder. He talks his journalism teacher into giving him class credit for his road trip covering Led Zeppelin's 1975 tour, which lands him--and the band--on the cover of Rolling Stone. He embeds with David Bowie as the sequestered genius transforms himself into a new persona: the Thin White Duke. Why did Bowie give Crowe such unprecedented access? Because you're young enough to be honest, Bowie tells him. Youth and humility are Crowe's ticket into the Eagles' dressing room in 1972, where Glenn Frey vows to keep the band together forever; to his first major interview with Kris Kristofferson; to earning the trust of icons like Gregg Allman and Joni Mitchell, who had sworn to never again speak to Rolling Stone. It's a magical odyssey, the journey of a teenage writer waved through the door to find his fellow dreamers, music geeks, and lifelong community. It's a path that leads him to writing and directing some of the most beloved films of the past forty years, from Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Say Anything... to Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous. His movies often resonate with the music of the artists he first met as a journalist, including Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Who, and Pearl Jam. The Uncool is also a surprisingly intimate family drama. If you've seen Almost Famous, you may think you know this story--but you don't. For the first time, Crowe opens up about his formative years in Palm Springs and pays tribute to his father, a decorated Army officer who taught him the irreplaceable value of the human voice. Crowe also offers a full portrait of his mother, whose singular spirit helped shape him into an unconventional visionary. With its vivid snapshots of a bygone era and a celebration of creativity and connection, this memoir is an essential read for music lovers or anyone chasing their wildest dreams. At the end of that roller-coaster journey, you might just find what you were looking for: your place in the world. Featured on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
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Baldwin: A Love Story
by Nicholas Boggs
Tells the overlapping stories of Baldwin's most sustaining intimate and artistic relationships: with his mentor, the Black American painter Beauford Delaney; with his lover and muse, the Swiss painter Lucien Happersberger; and with his collaborators, the famed Turkish actor Engin Cezzar and the iconoclastic French artist Yoran Cazac. Featured on Book TV.
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Kicking the Hornet's Nest: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East from Truman to Trump
by Daniel E. Zoughbie
The compelling, groundbreaking investigation of how the choices of twelve US presidents, from Truman to Trump, have fueled turbulence and turmoil in the Middle East. And the one president who chose a better way. Kicking the Hornet's Nest is a riveting exploration of how twelve US presidents have shaped the Middle East, often unleashing instability and conflict along the way. It is also the story of one US president who successfully charted a better course. From Truman to Trump, Daniel Zoughbie meticulously unpacks the decisions that have set the stage for today's unrest. But this book is more than just a history lesson; it's a sharp analysis of presidential decision-making and its far-reaching consequences. Today, the Middle East stands as a volatile landscape, more tumultuous than at any time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Zoughbie paints a vivid picture of how nearly every major nation-state in the Middle East and North Africa has grappled with existential crises in the recent years, paving the way for terrorist groups to threaten national sovereignty and for local conflicts to destabilize world order. Drawing on a vast array of primary sources and interviews with world leaders, the narrative explores pressing issues like nuclear proliferation, genocide, and nationalist conflicts fueled by sectarian fervor that have triggered global refugee waves. Kicking the Hornet's Nest is an eye-opening study of US presidential decision-making and foreign policy. With compassion and insight, Zoughbie reveals the essential information necessary for anyone seeking to understand eight decades of US foreign policy and its profound impact on billions of lives worldwide. Featured on Book TV.
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The Let Them Theory
by Mel Robbins
A simple, transformative approach to improving personal and professional relationships by shifting focus from controlling others to accepting them, offering science-backed strategies to reduce stress, enhance happiness, foster healthier connections, and empower individuals to prioritize their well-being and achieve personal fulfillment. Featured on Today.
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A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore
by Matthew Davis
From the tragic history of Wounded Knee and the horrors of Indian Boarding Schools, to the Land Back movement of today, Davis traces the Native American story of Mt. Rushmore alongside the narrative of the growing territory and state of South Dakota, and the economic and political forces that shaped the reasons for the Memorial's creation. A Biography of A Mountain combines history with reportage, bringing the complicated and nuanced story of Mt. Rushmore to life, from the land's origins as sacred tribal ground; to the expansion of the American West; to the larger-than-life personality of Gutzon Borglum, the artist who carved the presidential faces into the mountain; and up to the politicized present-day conflict over the site and its future. Exploring issues related to how we memorialize American history, Davis tells an imperative story for our time. Featured on Book TV.
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Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy
by Julia Ioffe
In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union. Nearly twenty years later, Ioffe returned to Moscow, only to discover just how much Russian society had changed while she had been living in America. The Soviet women she had known growing up--doctors, engineers, scientists--had seemingly been replaced with women desperate to marry rich and become stay-at-home moms. How had Russia gone from portraying itself as the vanguard of world feminism to the last bastion of conservative Christian values? In Motherland, Ioffe turns modern Russian history on its head, telling it exclusively through the stories of its women. From her own physician great-grandmothers to Lenin's lover, a feminist revolutionary; from the hundreds of thousands of Soviet girls who fought in World War II to the millions of single mothers who rebuilt and repopulated a devastated country; from the members of Pussy Riot to Yulia Navalnaya, wife of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, she chronicles one of the most audacious social experiments in history and how it failed the very women it was meant to liberate. Featured on Book TV.
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For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran's Women-Led Uprising
by Fatemeh Jamalpour
In September 2022, a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Jîna Amini, died after being beaten by police officers who arrested her for not adhering to the Islamic Republic's dress code. Her death galvanized thousands of Iranians--mostly women--who took to the streets in one of the country's largest uprisings in decades: the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Despite the threat of imprisonment or death for her work as a journalist covering political unrest, state repression, and grassroots activism in Iran--which has led to multiple interrogation sessions and arrests--Fatemeh Jamalpour joined the throngs of people fighting to topple Iran's religious extremist regime. And across the globe, Nilo Tabrizy, who emigrated from Iran with her family as a child, covered the protests and state violence, knowing that spotlighting the women on the front lines and the systemic injustice of the Iranian government meant she would not be able to safely return to Iran in the future. Though they had met only once in person, Nilo and Fatemeh corresponded constantly, often through encrypted platforms to protect Fatemeh. As the protests continued to unfold, the sense of sisterhood they shared led them to embark on an effort to document the spirit and legacy of the movement, and the history, geopolitics, and influences that led to this point. At once deeply personal and assiduously reported, For the Sun After Long Nights offers two perspectives on what it means to cover the stories that are closest to one's heart--both in the forefront and from afar. Featured on Book TV.
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Changeover: A Young Rivalry and a New Era of Men's Tennis
by Giri Nathan
For more than two decades, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, and Roger Federer dominated men's tennis so thoroughly that it became difficult to imagine how the game would keep its shine once they retired. Then came 2024--the first year since 2002 that none of them won a Grand Slam tournament--and a technicolor future was revealed. The major titles were divided between a pair of prodigies in their early twenties: the effervescent showman Carlos Alcaraz, whose infinite variety of shots won him the French Open and Wimbledon; and the relentlessly cool Jannik Sinner, whose power and precision secured him the Australian Open and US Open even amid a doping controversy. Though other young contenders jostled for the spotlight, and Djokovic tried to hold his ground, the transcendentally gifted Alcaraz and Sinner just kept installing their new regime. Punctuated with humor, brimming with insight, and rooted in a true fan's love of the game, this work of elevated sports journalism is a captivating primer to the rivalry poised to define the next decade of the sport. Featured on Book TV.
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The American Game: History and Hope in the Country of Lacrosse
by S. L. Price
Based on seven years of research and observation and crafted with consummate skill, The American Game takes readers inside a unique cultural landscape that nonetheless reflects the wider world. Fluidly weaving in compelling action on the field from World Championships to tense NCAA tournaments, Price also chronicles the controversies and anomalies that have in many ways defined lacrosse. Racism stubbornly persists--and the Haudenosaunee have endured plenty in their rise--yet few mainstream entities have done more than lacrosse to champion the Native American experience. The Duke rape case and the murder of Yeardley Love still resonate, reinforcing the sport's elite laxbro image, yet women remain the core force powering its astonishing boom. Lacrosse's longtime link with Wall Street endures, but its bond with elite military service is just as remarkable. Price introduces legendary individuals from Jim Brown (some say he was even better at lacrosse than football), Black superstar Kyle Harrison and the brilliant Iroquois stickman Lyle Thompson, to famed coaches Lars Tiffany and Kelly Amonte Hiller and Onondaga faithkeeper Oren Lyons. All of them, and all who play the game, pay homage to the mystical qualities of the lacrosse stick, which American coaching icon Bill Tierney calls the thing that makes you special. A masterpiece of narration and investigation, The American Game is the powerful story of a sport that, perhaps more than any other, captures the complexity of America in its ongoing effort to achieve a more perfect union.
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Becoming Baba: Fatherhood, Faith, and Finding Meaning in America
by Aymann Ismail
The son of Egyptian immigrants, Aymann Ismail came of age in the shadow of 9/11, tracking the barrage of predatory headlines pervading the media and influencing the popular consciousness about Muslims. After a series of bomb threats were directed at his Islamic school in Teaneck, New Jersey, just a few miles from downtown Manhattan, his parents--anxious that it was no longer safe to be so explicitly Muslim--enrolled him in public school, where he was the only Muslim his new friends had ever met. In the privacy of their home, they turned to their faith for guidance on how to live, adhering to traditional notions about gender roles, and avoiding the putative American dangers of alcohol, sex, and rebellion. And yet, Aymann is undeniably an American teenager, negotiating his place in multiple worlds while chafing against the structures of his upbringing. He eventually embarks on a career in political journalism, in part to establish his own version of things. In time, though, he also gains a deeper understanding and appreciation for his parents' values and sacrifices--his father's grueling work ethic as a town car driver, and his mother's adeptness at managing their itinerant family. When Aymann meets and falls in love with Mira, a woman with her own ideas about the modern Muslim family, his world shifts yet again. After Mira gets pregnant with their first child, Aymann begins to reckon with his past, future, and the beliefs that have shaped his life. What does it mean to be a Muslim man? More still, what does it mean to be any man--and a father to a baby boy and girl? And how best to honor one's cultural heritage while holding space for change and discovery? In lucid, confident prose, Aymann Ismail questions the sturdy frameworks of religion and family, the legacies of his childhood, and what will become his children's ethical and intellectual inheritance. To reckon unflinchingly with these questions offers him a road map for his young Muslim children on how to navigate the singular journey into adulthood. Featured on Book TV.
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The Broken King
by Michael Thomas
Akin to Baldwin's The Fire Next Time or Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Thomas' memoir unfolds through six powerful, interlocking and overlaying parts focusing on the lives of five men: his father--a philosopher, Boston Red Sox fan, and absent parent; his estranged older brother; his two sons growing up in Brooklyn; and always, heartbreakingly himself. At the center of The Broken King is the story of Thomas' own breakdown, a result of inherited family history and his own experiences, from growing up Black in the Boston suburbs to publishing a prize-winning novel with the house of Beckett. Every page of The Broken King rings with the impact of America's sweeping struggle with race and class, education and family, and builds to a brave, meticulous articulation of a creative mind's journey into and out of madness. Featured on Book TV.
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The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power
by Max Chafkin
Since the days of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, no industry has made a greater impact on the world than Silicon Valley. And few individuals have done more to shape Silicon Valley than Peter Thiel. The billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur has been a behind-the-scenes operator influencing countless aspects of our contemporary way of life, from the technologies we use every day to the delicate power balance between Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington. But despite his power and the ubiquity of his projects, no public figure is quite so mysterious. In the first major biography of Thiel, Max Chafkin traces the trajectory of the innovator's singular life and worldview, from his upbringing as the child of immigrant parents and years at Stanford as a burgeoning conservative thought leader to his founding of PayPal and Palantir, early investment in Facebook and SpaceX, and relationships with fellow tech titans Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Eric Schmidt. The Contrarian illuminates the extent to which Thiel has sought to export his values to the corridors of power beyond Silicon Valley, including funding the lawsuit that destroyed the blog Gawker and strenuously backing far-right political candidates, notably Donald Trump for president in 2016. Eye-opening and deeply reported, The Contrarian is a revelatory biography of a one-of-a-kind leader and an incisive portrait of a tech industry whose explosive growth and power is both thrilling and fraught with controversy. Featured on Book TV.
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Harford County Public Library
1221-A Brass Mill Rd Belcamp, Maryland 21017 410-273-5600
hcplonline.org
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