The On The Bookshelf Podcast

Martha Ackmann's new biography of Dolly Parton, "Ain't Nobody's Fool"

It's a larger-than-life new biography of country music legend and philanthropist Dolly Parton.

In Ain't Nobody's Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton, Martha Ackmann (St. Martin's Press) chronicles the life of an American Original. From her impoverished childhood in the Smoky Mountains to international stardom as a singer, songwriter, actress, businesswoman, and philanthropist, Dolly Parton has exceeded everyone's expectations except her own. During a time when the Beatles set the standard for contemporary music, Dolly appeared on a local country music television show that her high school classmates thought was pure cornpone. The day after her high school graduation, she boarded a bus for Nashville, but record executives turned her down. One said her voice sounded like a screech owl.

When Dolly finally got her foot in the door, her talent and focus catapulted her to the top of country charts, the pop world, and movie stardom. Yet her success came at a price. Shunned by many in Nashville who saw her ambition as a betrayal of her country music roots, Dolly became the target of death threats, lawsuits, and a judge who threatened to throw her in jail. She nearly collapsed on-stage and later succumbed to depression that pushed her to the brink, but she refused to be counted out and came back stronger than ever developing Dollywood, the amusement park that became the economic engine of East Tennessee, and founding the Imagination Library that provides free books to children around the world. Her philanthropy to health organizations led to creation of the Moderna COVID vaccine. And, finally, she returned to her roots, recording bluegrass albums that became the most celebrated of her unparalleled 60-year career.

Ain't Nobody's Fool is a deep dive into the social, historical, and personal forces that made Dolly Parton one of the most beloved and unifying figures in public life and includes interviews with friends, family members, school mates, Nashville neighbors, members of her band, studio musicians, producers, and many others. It also features never before seen photographs and unearthed documents shedding light on her family's hardscrabble life. More than anything, Martha Ackmann's fresh and animated new book proves Dolly Parton knows just who she is and she ain't nobody's fool.

Martha Ackmann is a journalist and author who writes about women who have changed America. Her essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The New York Times & The Washington Post. She also is a frequent commentator for New England Public Radio, and has been featured on CNN, National Public Radio, and the BBC. Martha is the recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Her books include: The Mercury 13: The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight; Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone, the First Woman to Play Professional Baseball in the Negro League; & These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson

 

Acclaimed War Correspondent Ken Rosen brings "Polar War" about changing Arctic

 

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  ABOUT POLAR WAR

  POLAR WAR: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic by Kenneth R. Rosen (January 6, 2026/$29.00 hardcover) offers a blend of travelogue and frontline reporting that reveals how climate change, military ambition, and economic opportunity are transforming the Arctic into the epicenter of a new cold war in which the planet's great powers are struggling for dominance.

  Russian spies. Nuclear submarines. Sabotaged pipelines. Undersea communications severed in the dark of night. The fastest-warming place on earth-where apartment buildings, hospitals, and homes crumble daily as permafrost melts and villages get washed away by rising seas-the Arctic stands at the crossroads of geopolitical ambition and environmental catastrophe. As climate change thaws the northern latitudes, opening once ice-bound shipping lanes and access to natural resources, the world's military powers are rushing to stake their claims in this increasingly strategic region. We've entered a new cold war-and every day it grows hotter.

  In POLAR WAR, Rosen takes readers on an extraordinary journey across the changing face of the far north. Through intimate portraits of scientists, soldiers, and Indigenous community leaders representing the interests of twenty-one countries across four continents, he witnesses firsthand how rising temperatures and growing tensions are reshaping life above and below the Arctic Circle. He finds himself on the trail of Navy SEALs training for arctic warfare, embarks on Coast Guard patrols monitoring Russian incursions, participates in close-quarter-combat training aboard foreign icebreakers in the Arctic sea ice, and visits remote research stations where international cooperation is giving way to espionage and the search for long-frozen biological weapons.

  POLAR WAR concludes with a prescriptive Appendix, "Reigning in the Arctic," in which Rosen elucidates "several definite and immediate steps American lawmakers and the current presidential administration must take to not only advance our national security in the arctic but also preserve the region for generations to come."

  Drawing on hundreds of interviews and three years of reporting from the frontlines of climate change and great power competition, Rosen's deeply researched and personal accounts capture the diverse landscapes, people, and conflicted interests that define this complex northern region. The result is both an elegy for a vanishing landscape and an urgent warning about how the race for Arctic dominance could spark the next global conflict.

  Kenneth R. Rosen is the recipient of a Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism and the Bayeux-Calvados Award for War Correspondents, a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award for his work in Syria and Iraq, and an Ira A. Lipman Fellow at Columbia University. He is the author of Troubled and Bulletproof Vest, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic & WIRED. He divides his time between Western Massachusetts and Northern Italy with his wife and their three children.