BOOKSHELF: More Outstanding Nonfiction & Fiction Works for Book Lovers

Compiled by Jamie H. Vaught

KySportsStyle.com Magazine

--New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West by David E. Sanger (Crown, $33) is an inside story of America's plunge into a volatile rivalry with the other two great nuclear powers—Xi Jinping’s China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The three powers now are engaged in a high-stakes struggle for military, economic, political, and technological supremacy, with nations around the world pressured to take sides. Yet all three are discovering that they are maneuvering for influence in a far more turbulent world than they imagined. Based on a remarkable array of interviews with top officials from five presidential administrations, U.S. intelligence agencies, foreign governments, and tech companies, the author unfolds a riveting narrative spun around many critical questions. Sanger is the White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times.

--Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams (Flatiron Books, $32.99) is an explosive memoir written by a former executive at Facebook. The 383-page hardcover exposes the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us. The author tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. It is a book that Facebook don't want you to read and its ownership group, Meta, sued and got a court order that prevents the author, who worked as director of global public policy, from promoting the book.

--With the Bark Off: A Journalist's Memories of LBJ and a Life in the News Media by Neal Spelce with Thomas Zigal (Briscoe Center For American History, $29.95) is an enjoyable read if you like politics and journalism. What if you got a call from President Johnson to be in Washington D.C. tomorrow to take a trip around the world? If you are a 24-year-old broadcast journalist, you certainly will buckle up, just like the author did. A two-week diplomatic dream trip turned into a lifelong rollercoaster ride. The Austin-based journalist shares candid moments with LBJ and five other U.S. presidents, including a rare interview with father and son presidents George Bush while just the three of them were cramped together in a small bass boat, fishing on a Texas lake. Spelce also said the book title, With the Bark Off, was used because LBJ used that phrase to describe the contents of his Presidential Library and Museum (at the University of Texas in Austin) when he spoke at the dedication ceremony that the author chaired:  "It's all here: the story of our time -- with the bark off.  This library will show the facts -- not just the joy and triumphs, but the sorrow and failures, too."

--American Populist: Huey Long of Louisiana by Thomas E. Patterson (Louisiana State University Press, $49.95) is a monumental biography of Gov. Long, a future U.S. senator who transformed the politics of Louisiana by standing for the interests of citizens whom state officials had historically ignored. Long is recognized as an inspirational progressive thinker, populist hero, and radical influence on the New Deal before an assassin’s bullet ended his life in 1935. He eased suffrage restrictions so that more people could vote, and voters endorsed his program of more robust government services and shifting the tax burden to those better able to pay. Despite several biographies, acclaimed novels, and historical studies in the years since Long’s death, his reputation today is mostly caricature: a spellbinding speaker, a dictator, a populist firebrand who was unprincipled and corrupt. Using previously untapped personal papers of Long and his son Russell, other primary sources, recent scholarship, and his experience as a lawyer, Patterson provides a necessary corrective as he analyzes the contours of Long’s career. The result is the most comprehensive, balanced, and analytical study of the Kingfish to date.

--Hurdle-isms: Wit and Wisdom from a Lifetime in Baseball by Clint Hurdle (Wiley, $22) is an entertaining volume for sports enthusiasts who are looking for an easy read filled with fun, humor, insight, and experience. A former major league baseball player who served as manager for the Colorado Rockies and the PIttsburgh Pirates, the author delivers a collection of his most inspirational stories. In each chapter, Hurdle describes the experience, strength, and hope he's gained throughout his MLB career as well as his successes and failures in baseball. The 132-page hardcover is highly recommended for sports fans.

--Jimmy Carter: The Last Interview and Other Conversations by the editors of Melville House (Melville House, $19.99) is filled with an interesting collections of interviews with Carter, who came from a background of farming and military service to forge an unlikely political career, first as governor of Georgia, and then as the 39th president of the U.S. The interviews collected here—four of them never published in book form before—span the arc of Carter’s long career as a politician, a public servant, and a citizen diplomat. They range from an early joust with conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. to his final interview, a moving joint conversation with his wife Rosalynn on the occasion of their 75th wedding anniversary.

--Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter, Second Edition, by Randall Balmer (University of North Carolina Press, $22) is a revised and expanded religious biography of President Carter whose political rise and fall coincided with the eclipse of Christian progressivism and the emergence of the Religious Right. The 281-page paperback reveals how the rise and fall of Carter's political fortunes mirrored the transformation of American religious politics. From his beginnings as a humble peanut farmer to the galvanizing politician who rode a reenergized religious movement into the White House, Carter's life and career mark him as the last great figure in America's long and venerable history of progressive evangelicalism.

--The Literary Legacy of Jimmy Carter: Essays on the President's Books by editors Mark I. West and Frye Gaillard (Rowman & Littlefield, $120) brings together the essays about the 33 books that President Carter has written over the course of his life. Carter’s expansive body of writing ranges across the genres of memoir, commentary, children’s literature, poetry, and a novel about the Revolutionary War. The editors have assembled a group of award-winning journalists, poets, historians, and literary scholars to reflect on this substantial – and to some, unexpected – dimension of Carter’s legacy. Carter never used a ghost writer. As a result, his distinct voice and point of view comes through in every book that he published.

--Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump's Return to Power by Alex Isenstadt (Grand Central Publishing, $30) takes readers deep into Mar-a-Lago, inside the courtroom, and aboard “Trump Force One” to show how Trump and his revamped team responded, overcame, and in some cases orchestrated each and every surreal moment in this one-of-a-kind presidential campaign. Based on extraordinary access and over 300 interviews, the author paints a unique and deeply revealing portrait of a man bent on returning to the White House at all costs – and who successfully portrayed himself as an avatar of vengeance for the millions of Americans who voted for him. The author serves as Senior Political Reporter at Axios. Previously, he was National Political reporter at Politico, where he covered Trump since 2015.

--House of Huawei: The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company by Eva Dou (Portfolio/Penguin, $34) shows a remarkable portrait of Huawei’s reclusive founder, Ren Zhengfei, and how he built a sprawling corporate empire—one whose rise Western policymakers have become increasingly obsessed with halting. Based on wide-ranging interviews and painstaking archival research, the author pieces together the global web of power, money, influence, surveillance, bloodshed, and national glory that Huawei helped to build—and that has also ensnared it. The author is a technology policy reporter for the Washington Post.

--Interference: The Inside Story of Trump, Russia, and the Mueller Investigation by Aaron Zebley, James Quarles and Andrew Goldstein (Simon & Schuster, $28.99) uncovers the explosive revelations of the Mueller investigation, detailing the behind-the-scenes efforts to expose Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election to favor Donald Trump and the ways Trump interfered in the ongoing investigation, as recounted by Robert Mueller’s closest colleagues, and including an introduction by Mueller himself. The team also shares new and important insights about the role of a special counsel and a criminal investigation in holding a president accountable.

The 262-page hardcover is the true history of the most important and consequential decisions, obstacles, and quandaries Mueller and his team faced when investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. For the first time, Mueller’s only deputy, his most senior counselor who served on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and the lead prosecutor looking into obstruction of justice and Russian interference, have come together to tell a highly relevant and readable account of their investigation into election interference and the connections between various Russians and members of the 2016 Trump campaign.

--Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher (Simon & Schuster, $19.99) is a scathing, but fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead. The award-winning journalist has written the inside story about modern Silicon Valley and the biggest boom in wealth creation in the history of the world. Swisher has interviewed everyone who matters in tech over 30 years, right when they presided over an explosion of world-changing innovation that has both helped and hurt our world. Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, Bob Iger, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Meg Whitman, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg are just a few whom the author made sweat—figuratively and, in Zuckerberg’s case, literally. Part memoir, part history, the readable paperback is a necessary chronicle of tech’s most powerful players.

--Introducing the New Testament: A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey (second edition) by Mark Allan Powell (Baker Academic, $59.99) is a engaging textbook that is critical in understanding the New Testament along with a variety of pedagogical aids, including sidebars, maps, tables, charts, diagrams, and suggestions for further reading. The full-color interior features art from around the world that illustrates the New Testament's impact on history and culture. This new edition has been thoroughly revised in response to professor feedback and features an updated interior design while offering expanded coverage of the New Testament world in a new chapter on Jewish backgrounds. The author is professor emeritus at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, where he taught New Testament for 32 years.

FICTION

--Beneath the Stands by Emily McIntire (Bloom Books, $18.99) is an emotional story filled with romance and sports written by a bestselling author. Elliot Carson left Sugarlake and has never looked back. Revered as the next big thing in basketball, Eli's a star until an injury ends his career, sending him spiraling with no direction. But he won't go home. He can't. Instead, he accepts a coaching gig at Florida Coast University, determined to leave his past behind. But fate has other plans when Becca, his sister's best friend, shows up as a student and, even worse, becomes the new team manager. Rebecca Sanger is the preacher's daughter and the town's disappointment. When she ignores her family's demands to come home, she's cut off and needs a job so she can stay enrolled at FCU. She thought she had everything figured out, until Eli Carson—the person she hates more than anything in the world—ends up being her new boss. Forced together, Becca and Eli's hatred turns to heat, and they start an affair. But disaster quickly strikes, ripping them apart. Years pass, and Becca's back home, under her parent's thumb, and living a mundane life. When Eli shows up out of the blue with a fiancée in tow, Becca is tasked with planning their wedding. There's only one problem. Becca still loves Eli. And he hates her. For the second time in their lives, they're forced together, and they'll find out just how thin the line is between hate... and a love that lasts a lifetime.

--The Art of Catching Feelings by Alicia Thompson (Berkley Romance, $19) is another story filled with romance and sports. A professional baseball player and his heckler prove that true love is worth going to bat for in the next swoony romance by USA Today bestselling author. Daphne Brink doesn’t follow baseball, but watching “America’s Snoozefest” certainly beats sitting at home in the days after she signs her divorce papers. After one too many ballpark beers, she heckles Carolina Battery player Chris Kepler, who quickly proves there might actually be a little crying in baseball. Horrified, Daphne reaches out to Chris on social media to apologize . . . but forgets to identify herself as his heckler in her message. Chris doesn’t usually respond to random fans on social media, but he’s grieving and fragile after an emotionally turbulent few months. When a DM from “Duckie” catches his eye, he impulsively messages back. Duckie is sweet, funny, and seems to understand him in a way no one else does. Daphne isn’t sure how much longer she can keep lying to Chris, especially as she starts working with the team in real life and their feelings for each other deepen. When he finds out the truth, will it be three strikes, she’s out? Thompson is a writer, reader and lover of baseball.