Updated December 18, 2022
Compiled by Jamie H. Vaught
--Empathy Economics: Janet Yellen's Remarkable Rise to Power and Her Drive to Spread Prosperity to All by Owen Ullmann (PublicAffairs, $32) is a trailblazing story of Yellen, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg of economics, and her lifelong advocacy for an economics of empathy. When President Biden chose Yellen as his choice for secretary of the treasury, it was the peak moment of a remarkable life. She is the first person to hold all three top economic policy jobs in the U.S. -- chair of both the Federal Reserve and the President's Council of Economic Advisors as well as treasury secretary. With Yellen's humility and compassion as her trademarks, we see the influence of her father, a physician whose pay-what-you-can philosophy meant never turning anyone way. That compassion now extends across our country.
--The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink by William Inboden (Dutton, $35) reveals how Reagan’s White House waged the Cold War while managing multiple crises around the world. Based on thousands of pages of newly-declassified documents and interviews with senior Reagan officials, the 593-page hardcover is filled with fresh insights into one of America’s most consequential presidents. The author is executive director of the Clements Center for National Security and associate professor of Public Policy and History at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, both at the University of Texas at Austin.
--Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter: Power and Human Rights, 1975-2020 by E. Stanly Godbold, Jr. (Oxford University Press, $39.95) is a dual biography that offers a comprehensive account of the professional and personal lives of the powerful couple who have worked together as reformers in Georgia, President and First Lady of the U.S., and founders of the Carter Center to promote international health, conflict resolution, and democracy. President and Mrs. Carter's marriage of over 75 years is the longest of any American presidential couple and has been described by them as a "full partnership." This 889-page hardcover is the second of a two-volume biography of Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter by the author, who wrote Jimmy and Rosalynn: The Georgia Years, 1924-1974. Godbold, Jr. served as consultant and commentator for the PBS American Experience documentary on the life of Jimmy Carter.
--Men in Blazers Present Gods of Soccer: The Pantheon of the 100 Greatest Soccer Players (According to Us) by Roger Bennett, Michael Davies, Miranda Davis and Nate Kitch (Chronicle Prism, $40) is loaded with the stories of household names like David Beckham and Alex Morgan, along with cult icons such as Garrincha, the Brazilian star of the 1960s who was born with one leg six inches shorter than the other, and Briana Scurry, a trailblazer who paved a path for young Black soccer-playing women. You will revel in the depictions of players you adore, discover tales you have never heard, and experience vivid stories of dreams, loyalty, perseverance, creativity, and luck. The hardcover will be available in mid-October.
--Church, Interrupted: Havoc & Hope: The Tender Revolt of Pope Francis by John Cornwell (Chronicle Prism, $27.95) is a revealing portrait of Pope Francis's hopeful yet controversial efforts to recreate the Catholic Church to become, once again, a welcoming place of empathy, love, and inclusiveness. With unique insights and original reporting, the author shows how Francis has persistently provoked and disrupted his stubbornly unchanging Church, purging clerical corruption and reforming entrenched institutions, while calling for action against global poverty, climate change, and racism.
--The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser (Doubleday, $32) is an extraordinary account about the explosive Trump presidency that is loaded with inside stories. The authors also argue that President Trump was not just lurching from one controversy to another; he was learning to be more like the foreign autocrats he admired. The 725-page hardcover is based on unprecedented access to key players, from President Trump himself to cabinet officers, military generals, close advisers, Trump family members, congressional leaders, foreign officials and others.
--Becoming FDR: The Personal Crisis That Made A President by Jonathan Darman (Random House, $32) is a remarkable story of how President Roosevelt's struggles with polio during his early days prepared him for the Great Depression and World War II. Tracing the physical, political, and personal evolution of the iconic president, the hardcover shows how adversity can lead to greatness, and to the power to remake the world. A former correspondent for Newsweek, the author also wrote "Landslide: LBJ and Ronald Reagan at the Dawn of a New America."
--Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the Department of Justice Against His Critics by Michael Cohen (Melville House, $32.50) tells the behind-the-scenes story of what can happen to you -- and what really happened to him -- when a President who believes himself to be above the law decides to go after his critics. Cohen was once the personal attorney to President Trump, and before that was executive vice president for the Trump Organization and special counsel to Trump.
--The Fighting Soul: On The Road With Bernie Sanders by Ari Rabin-Havt (Liveright Publishing, $26.95) is an intimate account about a very private U.S. Senator. The 314-page hardcover -- written by a close advisor and deputy campaign manager on Sanders' most recent presidential campaign -- offers a behind-the-scenes account of Sanders’s run, including his heart attack in Las Vegas, his notorious debate encounter with fellow-progressive Elizabeth Warren, and a momentous conversation between Sanders and Barack Obama that has never been reported before. The author spent more hours between 2017 and 2020 with the Vermont senator than anyone else.
--Breaking History: A White House Memoir by Jared Kushner (Broadside Books, $35) is a candid account of what happened behind closed doors during the Trump presidency. The 493-page volume takes readers inside debates in the Oval Office, double-crosses at the United Nations, tense meetings in Arab palaces, high-stakes negotiations, and the daily barrage of leaks, false allegations, investigations, and West Wing infighting. The son-in-law of President Trump, Kushner served as presidential advisor in the White House.
--The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama by Gabriel Debenedetti (Henry Holt and Company, $29.99) is an inside look at the close, complicated, and at-times uncertain relationship between Biden and Obama from 2003 to 2022. The 406-page hardcover discusses the past, present, and future of the unusual partnership, detailing its development, its twists and turns, its ruptures and reunions, and its path to this pivotal moment for each man’s legacy. The author is the national correspondent for New York Magazine, where he writes about politics and national affairs.
--If You Want Something Done: Leadership Lessons from Bold Women by Nikki R. Haley (St. Martin's Press, $26.99) is an intimate and inspirational book that celebrates the world’s most iconic women leaders. The hardcover offers inspiring examples of women who worked against obstacles and opposition to get things done―including Haley herself. As a brown girl growing up in Bamberg, South Carolina, no one would have predicted Haley would become the first minority female governor in the country or the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
--Taking Back Trump's America: Why We Lost the White House and How We'll Win It Back by Peter Navarro (Bombardier Books, $28) is a follow-up to the bestselling In Trump Time: A Journal of America's Plague Year. The author is one one of only three senior White House officials who served under President Trump's command from the 2016 presidential campaign to the end of his first term in office.
--Take Up Space: The Unprecedented AOC by the Editors of New York Magazine with Lisa Miller (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, $28) is an entertaining biography of controversial Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the bestselling tradition of notorious RBG and Pelosi that explores her explosive rise and impact on the future of American culture and politics. At 29, AOC, a former waitress and bartender, was sworn in as the youngest member of the 116th Congress and became the youngest woman to serve as a Representative in U.S. history.
--Political Science in America: Oral Histories of a Discipline by editors Michael A. Baer, Malcolm E. Jewell and Lee Sigelman (University Press of Kentucky, $25) contains interviews with 15 major figures in an extensive oral history who speak frankly about the intellectual and institutional roots of political science and trace its evolution. Through their words, we learn what it was like to be a part of the earliest Ph.D. programs and to work with early leaders. Even though this book was published in 2014, the 250-page paperback is of great interest to all political science buffs as a historical perspective on their discipline.
--CenterStage: My Most Fascinating Interviews from A-Rod to Jay-Z by Michael Kay (Scribner, $18.99) is an entertaining collection of his most memorable interviews with the most intriguing personalities in sports and entertainment. Among the interviews featured in the book are those with Red Auerbach, Charles Barkley, Mike Tyson, Bobby Orr, Sly Stallone, Jay-Z, Lorne Michaels, Paul Simon, John McEnroe, Rob Reiner, Seth Meyers, Serena Williams, Alan Alda, David Halberstam, Larry David, Bob Costas, Billy Crystal, Lindsey Vonn, Chris Evert, and Quentin Tarantino. The author is the New York Yankees' announcer for YES Network.
--Suppression, Deception, Snobbery, and Bias: Why the Press Gets So Much Wrong -- And Just Doesn't Care by Ari Fleischer (Broadside Books, $28.990 points out that half the country is keenly aware that they are routinely mocked and looked down on by much of the media. The disdain shown by too many reporters for too many Americans is a major reason our nation is polarized and divided. A former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush, Fleischer writes today's mainstream media is dominated by college-educated Democratic voters who write stories for other college-educated Democrats. These journalists haven’t just slanted the media; they take sides in our debates and are too often activists for a cause. There is no secret meeting where liberals decide how to slant the news. There is no central source of propaganda. It’s worse than that. It comes naturally to the media because they’re too much alike—they have a diversity problem.
--NLT One Year Chronological Study Bible (Tyndale House Publishers, $29.99) features a rare combination of study and devotional content presented alongside the clear and accurate New Living Translation text, which has been ordered chronologically and organized into 14 eras of history. It’s God’s story laid out as we’re used to reading a story—from beginning to end. It's an impressive Bible broken down into manageable daily readings along with daily introductions.
--The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State by Philip Bowring (Bloomsbury Academic, $27) traces the history of this populous island to define and explain its position in the modern world. While the Philippines is known mostly for natural disasters, migrant labor and dictatorial presidents, the author shows how it is much, much more. Looking past the headlines of volcanoes, earthquakes and violence, it asks why has the Filipino economy lagged behind its neighbors, explores the importance of its location in geopolitics, and investigates how its deep-rooted Catholicism clashes with the Islamic consciousness of the region in which it sits.
--The Greatest Speeches of Donald J. Trump: 45th President of the United States (Humanix Books, $49.99) is a collection of President Trump's most important speeches and words to the nation, including his campaign announcement at Trump Tower, his salute to America at Mount Rushmore and his farewell address to the people of the U.S. and the World. The 320-page hardcover is edited by New York Times bestselling author and President Reagan biographer Craig Shirley, who also wrote the introduction.
--Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced by Paul Manafort (Skyhorse, $32.50) is a remarkable memoir about his life and career as a lobbyist, presidential advisor and attorney. The hardcover exposes the lies left unchallenged by media who pronounced Manafort guilty long before his case ever saw the inside of a courtroom. He was convicted for his crimes, but President Trump later pardoned him in December 2020.
--Titan of the Senate: Orrin Hatch and the Once and Future Golden Age of Bipartisanship by William Doyle (Center Street, $29) is a dramatic story of a conservative champion who led a golden age of bipartisanship and passed more legislation than any other Senator in the post-Vietnam era. The hardcover is based on interviews with Hatch and many of his Senate colleagues plus over 10,000 pages of research from the U.S. Senate Historian's files. Hatch passed away in 2022 at the age of 88. Doyle is a New York Times bestselling, award-winning author and television producer based in New York City.
--Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State by Alfred W. McCoy (University of Wisconsin Press, $39.95) shows how this imperial panopticon slowly crushed the Filipino revolutionary movement with a lethal mix of firepower, surveillance, and incriminating information. Even after Washington freed its colony and won global power in 1945, it would intervene in the Philippines periodically for the next half-century—using the country as a laboratory for counterinsurgency and rearming local security forces for repression. In trying to create a democracy in the Philippines, the U.S. unleashed profoundly undemocratic forces that persist to the present day. Published in 2009, the book remains an interesting perspective on the relationship between the U.S. and the Philippines.
--Longshot: How Political Nobodies Took Andrew Yang National--and the New Playbook That Let Us Build a Movement by Zach Graumann (BenBella Books, $26.95) tells the story of how Yang went from nobody to national presence, breathing life into the behind-the-scenes antics of the unusual presidential campaign that started a movement. The author served as Yang's campaign manager.
Jamie H. Vaught, a longtime sports columnist in Kentucky, is the author of five books about UK basketball, including recently-published “Chasing the Cats: A Kentucky Basketball Journey.” He is the editor and founder of KySportsStyle.com Magazine, and a professor at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College in Middlesboro. You can follow him on Twitter @KySportsStyle or reach him via email at KySportsStyle@gmail.com.
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