New Book Releases | December 16
In our last new releases post of the year, we highlight four books coming out before 2026 arrives.
New book releases slow down in the second half of December, and that reality combined with the holidays means that we won't be posting new releases for the final two weeks of the year. So, while we've gathered four book recommendations as usual this week—all coming out before the new year arrives—not all are being released today. (Best Laid Plans and The Octopus Organization are available online and in local bookstores today, and Human Agency in a Digital World and Ain't Nobody's Fool will become available over the next to weeks.) Whenever they arrive, we are confident you'll find value in each.
Ain't Nobody's Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton by Martha Ackmann, published by St. Martin's Press
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 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.
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.
Best Laid Plans: A Simple Planning System for Living a Life That You Love by Sarah Hart-Unger, published by Sourcebooks
Stop running on auto-pilot and make the most of every day with intentional planning!
Every moment matters when you have big goals for your family, career, and the community you're committed to. Between kids' schedules, work meetings, anniversary trips, the occasional date night, and squeezing in a quick gym session, it's easy to get overwhelmed! The constant barrage of obligations and to-dos is exhausting—especially for women who are also managing the mental load in most areas of family life. We end up stuck in routines and habits that don't serve us, as our dreams seem to slip further and further away.
What if, instead of greeting each day in a scramble to keep up, there was a clearly laid out plan, complete with breathing room for rest and fun? In Best Laid Plans, Dr. Sarah Hart-Unger offers an intuitive planning method for setting audacious goals, working with the natural rhythms of your life in every season, and bringing a sense of peace and joy back to every day.
With Best Laid Plans, you'll learn:
- How to create and accomplish nested goals for every year, month, week, and day
- The magic of planning in seasonal quintiles, or five seasons instead of four
- The airtight task management method for handling all of those pesky to-dos
- How to fill each day with meaningful moments of connection and delight
Discover a simple way to make the most of every day and live your best life.
Human Agency in a Digital World: Understand Technology and Make It Work for You by Marcus Fontoura, published by 8080 Books
This may be the first true AI-era self-help book—not because we need help using technology, but because we need help using it well. It's about building the knowledge—and the confidence—to question, to evaluate, to choose. Because understanding how algorithms work is the first step in making sure they work for us.
Human Agency in a Digital World is a book about reclaiming our role—not as passengers, but as pilots—in the fast-moving journey of technological change. Written by a computer scientist who is also a father, a teacher, and a lifelong student of how things work, this book is a deeply personal and accessible guide to the systems shaping our lives—and how we might shape them back.
We are surrounded by digital agents. They suggest the next song, answer our questions, sort our emails, recommend what to watch, and—often invisibly—shape what we think. But what do we know about them? And how much power do we really have to question, understand, or even redirect their impact?
In this book, Marcus Fontoura explores the hidden architectures of modern life—from social media and search engines to cloud computing, AI, and quantum technologies—uncovering both how they work and what they mean. Drawing from decades of experience building the backbone of the internet and cloud platforms, he demystifies the core concepts that govern today's systems and offers readers a way to develop digital fluency without needing a computer science degree.
But this is not just a book about machines. It's a book about people—about how we use efficiency not just to optimize for speed or cost, but to unlock creativity, opportunity, and well-being. With examples ranging from broken playlists to protein folding, and reflections that move fluidly between systems thinking and everyday life, Human Agency in a Digital World asks us to consider a simple but profound question: what do we want technology to do for us, and what will we do with it in return?
The Octopus Organization: A Guide to Thriving in a World of Continuous Transformation by Phil Le-Brun & Jana Werner, published by Harvard Business Review Press
Drive lasting change with a new, nimbler organization focused on continuous change.
Our organizations are stuck. We talk about agility but find ourselves bogged down in bureaucracy. We aspire to innovate but run into systems built to prevent mistakes, not spark breakthroughs. We need to learn and adapt, but we're operating with an outdated playbook built for efficiency and control. And our attempts to fix all this—by pouring trillions into huge, top-down transformations—make the problems worse.
But there is a better way: Building an Octopus Organization.
One of nature's most intelligent and curious creatures, the octopus is everything your organization needs to be: smart, endlessly adaptable, and highly resilient. Its eight tentacles work in concert, but each can also think for itself. This book shows how to achieve the same balance of cohesion and autonomy and to guide your organization toward a living, breathing system—one that learns, adapts, and thrives by tapping into the distributed intelligence of its people.
Drawing on their experience at companies such as Amazon and McDonald's and work with hundreds of global companies, AWS executives Phil Le-Brun and Jana Werner show you how to break away from the broken model of transformation and embrace continuous change. They share thirty-six "antipatterns"—conditioned habits—that keep us stuck and, in their place, provide "levers" that create meaningful improvement in months, not years.
The Octopus Organization is your guide to moving beyond rigid structures and nurturing the living, adaptable organization you aspire to create, and be a part of.
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The Porchlight staff members choosing new books each week are Porchlight's Managing Director, Sally Haldorson, and the marketing team of Gabriella Cisneros and Dylan Schleicher.
Unless otherwise noted, all book descriptions are from the publisher.
