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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 Modernize Literature 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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| 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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| Hated by All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind by Jason ZengerleJournalist Jason Zengerle offers a discerning summary of conservative pundit Tucker Carlson’s career to date while sounding a sobering critique of today’s TV news landscape. Always right-leaning but once a proponent of nuanced political debate, Carlson seemed to abandon these ideals after signing on with Fox News, instead flirting with agitprop, conspiracies, and white supremacism. For fans of: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth by Brian Stelter. |
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Focus on: Black History Month
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| Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant...and Completely Over It by Lester Fabian BrathwaiteEntertainment Weekly writer Lester Fabian Brathwaite debuts with a provocative collection of essays focused on the author’s Black and queer identity. He strikes a tone that veers from funny to frustrated while tackling topics relating to body image, Black masculinity, the white male gaze, and much more in these witty and irreverent monologues. For fans of: the confessional writing of Brontez Purnell. |
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Nina Simone in Comics!
by Sophie Adriansen
This is the story of an emancipation, that of a young Black and poor woman living in an American marked by segregation. This is the story of a fierce battle, that of a musician involved in the civil rights movement. This is the story of a long career, that of a pianist and singer as talented as determined. This is the story of Nina Simone, a unique artist, role model, and inspiration for generations to come. Genius pianist, fabulous singer and committed artist, Nina Simone remains an inspiration for generations.
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| Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde by Alexis Pauline GumbsPoet Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ innovative, adventurous biography of Black feminist poet Audre Lorde is a tribute to and legacy of a shared intersectional identity. Gumbs, who, like her subject, is an LGBTQIA+ descendant of Caribbean immigrants, details how Lorde rose from a difficult upbringing to become an inspiring feminist figure whose work never hesitated to call out injustice and oppression in this “scintillating tour de force” (Publishers Weekly). |
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A Dream Deferred: The Art and Activism of Edwin Augustus Harleston
by M. Akua McDaniel
The first full-length biography of one of South Carolina's most significant African American visual artists Excluded from the Charleston Renaissance because of his race and pushed to the edges of the Harlem Renaissance by geography and circumstance, Edwin Augustus Harleston was an artist caught between worlds. Despite being marginalized within his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, during his lifetime, Harleston nonetheless pursued his career as a painter, first at Charleston's Avery Institute, later at Atlanta University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Harleston received commissions and had gallery exhibitions that received critical praise in northern cities. When the demands of family pulled him back to Charleston, where he struggled to find the same freedom or acclaim that he had enjoyed in the North. In A Dream Deferred, Akua McDaniel offers the first comprehensive biography of Harleston. McDaniel considers not only his efforts to redefine the image of Black life in American visual culture, but she also examines Harleston's life as a social and political activist, including his role in founding the first NAACP chapter in South Carolina. McDaniel offers a full portrait of Harleston's life and career, one that had an outsized impact on the American art world, and beyond.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Mercer County Library System
2751 Brunswick Pike Lawrenceville, New Jersey 08648 609-882-9246
https://mcl.org
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