Book News

When devastating news rattles a young girl's community, her normally attentive parents and neighbors are suddenly exhausted and distracted. At school, her teacher tells the class to look for the helpers—the good people working to make things better in big and small ways. She wants more than anything to help in a BIG way, but maybe she can start with one small act of kindness instead . . . and then another, and another.Small things can compound, after all, to make a world of difference. The Breaking News by Sarah Lynne Reul touches on themes of community, resilience, and optimism with an authenticity that will resonate with readers young and old.

"One of America’s most experienced and exemplary journalists has written an unsparing analysis of the dreadful consequences -- for journalism and the nation -- of ‘how the news lost a race to the bottom with itself.’” -- George F. Will In this national bestseller, Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News political editor, takes readers inside America’s broken newsrooms that have succumbed to the temptation of “rage revenue.” One of America’s sharpest political analysts, Stirewalt employs his trademark wit and insight to reveal how these media organizations slant coverage – and why that drives political division and rewards outrageous conduct. The New York Times wrote that Stirewalt’s book "is an often candid reflection on the state of political journalism and his time at Fox News, where such post-mortem assessments are not common..." Broken News is a fascinating, deeply researched, conversation-provoking study of how the news is made and how it must be repaired. Stirewalt goes deep inside the history of the industry to explain how today’s media divides America for profit. And he offers practical advice for how readers, listeners, and viewers can (and should) become better news consumers for the sake of the republic.

From the editor in chief of Breitbart News, the New York Times bestselling “must-read” (Sean Hannity) investigation into how the establishment media became weaponized against Donald Trump and his supporters on behalf of the political left. In this timely and “important book” (Glenn Beck), Marlow explains how the establishment press destroyed its own credibility with a relentless stream of “fake news” designed to smear Donald Trump and his supporters while advancing a leftist agenda. He also reveals key details on how our information gatekeepers truly operate and why America’s “fake news” moment might never end. Breitbart—and Trump—began banging the drum about “fake news” during the 2016 election, and it resonated with millions of voters because they intuitively knew the corporate media was willing to say or write anything to achieve their political ends. It’s a battle cry that continues to this day. Deeply researched and eye-opening, Breaking the News rips back the curtain on the inner workings of how the establishment media weaponizes information to achieve their political and cultural ends.

We think we know everything about our smartphones. We use them constantly. We depend on them for every conceivable purpose. We are familiar with every inch of their compact frames. But there is more to the smartphone than meets the eye. How have smartphones shaped the way we socialize and interact? Who tracks our actions, our preferences, our movements as recorded by our smartphones? These are just some of the questions that journalist Elizabeth Woyke answers in this muckraking expose of the $241 billion industry that produces more than 700 million devices each year. In the tradition of The Coffee Book, The Sneaker Book, Oil, and Cigarettes, The Smartphone offers not only a step-by-step guide to how smartphones are designed and manufactured but also a bold exploration of the darker side of this massive industry, including the exploitation of labor, the disposal of electronic waste, and the underground networks that hack and smuggle smartphones. Featuring interviews with key figures in the development of the smartphone and expert assessments of the industry's main players--Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung--The Smartphone is the perfect introduction to this most personal of gadgets. Your smartphone will never look the same again.

In this sequel to bestselling The Visual Miscellaneum, author David McCandless reveals unexpected--and much needed--positive developments from around the world. David McCandless creates simple, elegant ways to see and understand complex, abstract, and often obscured information important to our lives. A specialist in infographics. McCandless cuts through the noise of data overload, creating visually stunning displays that not only make facts comprehensive, but illuminates their connections and adds context, making information meaningful in beautiful and entertaining way. Designed in David McCandless's signature style. The Visual Miscellaneum of Good News focuses on fascinating positive developments at a time when the world has never seemed more dangerous and unpredictable. McCandless draws from philosophy, spirituality, ecology, society, technology, history, science, economics, and pop culture, to reveal positive trends and developments, from the invention of a breakthrough device that uses ocean forces to clean plastic from the world's seas, to a new method of converting donated blood to the crucial "O" negative type that can be used universally. In cutting edge graphs, charts, and illustrations, David McCandless creatively visualizes unexpected and compelling relationships between diverse data sets. Among his surprising findings: almost 250 US cities have remained in the Paris Accord; there are more female CEOs in the world than ever before; a new vaccine has been developed to help protect bees; Zika is disappearing from the Americas. At a time when we are besieged by disturbing events, The Visual Miscellaneum of Good News is the antidote to brighten the darkest day--a shot of positivity and good cheer that will lift the spirts and provide sorely needed hope about our world in a way never before seen.

While American literary history has long acknowledged the profound influence of journalism on canonical male writers, Sari Edelstein argues that American women writers were also influenced by a dynamic relationship with the mainstream press. From the early republic through the turn of the twentieth century, she offers a comprehensive reassessment of writers such as Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Harriet Jacobs, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Drawing on slave narratives, sentimental novels, and realist fiction, Edelstein examines how advances in journalism--including the emergence of the penny press, the rise of the story-paper, and the birth of eyewitness reportage--shaped not only a female literary tradition but also gender conventions themselves. Excluded from formal politics and lacking the vote, women writers were deft analysts of the prevalent tropes and aesthetic gestures of journalism, which they alternately relied upon and resisted in their efforts to influence public opinion and to intervene in political debates. Ultimately, Between the Novel and the News is a project of recovery that transforms our understanding of the genesis and the development of American women's writing.

Soon to be a Major Motion Picture National Book Award Finalist—Fiction In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction from the author of Enemy Women that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust. In the wake of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence. In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna’s parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows. Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act “civilized.” Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forming a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land. Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember—strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become—in the eyes of the law—a kidnapper himself.

#1 New York Times-Bestselling Author: The best of friends, Toots, Ida, Mavis, and Sophie have been there for each other through thick and thin… Teresa “Toots” Amelia Loudenberry has her quirks, but no one would ever question her loyalty. So it’s no surprise when Toots decides to extend her stay in Charleston to help care for her ailing housekeeper. Though the Charleston air is drenched with azalea and honeysuckle, and there’s always a pitcher of sweet tea close to hand, the ladies have little time for relaxing. Ida’s new line of cosmetics is about to launch, and Toots, Mavis, and Sophie are relishing new careers as models. And Abby, Toots’s daughter, is getting hitched. In the middle of so much change, Toots is almost too busy to notice her own unexpected romance. After eight husbands, she’s sworn never to get involved again. But fate—and her friends—may have other plans. And every godmother, fairy or otherwise, loves a story that ends with happily-ever-after . . . “Whoever thought the ‘golden years’ were boring never met the Godmothers.”—RT Reviews “Michaels’ engaging version of the Golden Girls.”—Booklist

International Bestseller When Will There Be Good News? is the brilliant new novel from the acclaimed author of Case Histories and One Good Turn, once again featuring private investigator Jackson Brodie. Thirty years ago, six-year-old Joanna witnessed the brutal murders of her mother, brother and sister, before escaping into a field, and running for her life. Now, the man convicted of the crime is being released from prison, meaning Dr. Joanna Hunter has one more reason to dwell on the pain of that day, especially with her own infant son to protect. Sixteen-year-old Reggie, recently orphaned and wise beyond her years, works as a nanny for Joanna Hunter, but has no idea of the woman’s horrific past. All Reggie knows is that Dr. Hunter cares more about her baby than life itself, and that the two of them make up just the sort of family Reggie wished she had: that unbreakable bond, that safe port in the storm. When Dr. Hunter goes missing, Reggie seems to be the only person who is worried, despite the decidedly shifty business interests of Joanna’s husband, Neil, and the unknown whereabouts of the newly freed murderer, Andrew Decker. Across town, Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe is looking for a missing person of her own, murderer David Needler, whose family lives in terror that he will return to finish the job he started. So it’s not surprising that she listens to Reggie’s outrageous thoughts on Dr. Hunter’s disappearance with only mild attention. But when ex-police officer and Private Investigator, Jackson Brodie arrives on the scene, with connections to Reggie and Joanna Hunter of his own, the details begin to snap into place. And, as Louise knows, once Jackson is involved there’s no telling how many criminal threads he will be able to pull together—or how many could potentially end up wrapped around his own neck. In an extraordinary virtuoso display, Kate Atkinson has produced one of the most engrossing, masterful, and piercingly insightful novels of this or any year. It is also as hilarious as it is heartbreaking, as Atkinson weaves in and out of the lives of her eccentric, grief-plagued, and often all-too-human cast. Yet out of the excesses of her characters and extreme events that shake their worlds comes a relatively simple message, about being good, loyal, and true. When Will There Be Good News? shows us what it means to survive the past and the present, and to have the strength to just keep on keeping on.