Taylor Swift’s latest release isn’t a new song or album — it’s a book hitting store shelves on Black Friday that commemorates the pop star’s record-setting “Eras Tour.” 

The volume chronicles Swift’s wildly successful series of concerts, which concludes in December and which last year became the first music tour to gross over $1 billion. 

A movie version of the concert she performed on her Eras Tour also shattered box office records. It earned an estimated $96 million domestically over its opening weekend, making it the most successful concert film of all time, according to Comscore. 

Where can I buy the book?

The new keepsake, titled “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour Book,” is available only at Target. It hits the retailer’s stores on Friday, while it will become available for sale on Target’s website on Saturday. Swift self-published the book under Taylor Swift Publications. 

Target first teased the book launch in an Instagram post on Oct. 15. Swift herself also promoted the book in an Instagram post that garnered more than 3.6 million likes. 

What’s in The Eras Tour book?

The 256-page hardcover title, which costs $39.99, includes unreleased photographs of Swift in concert from every period in her meteoric career, according to Target.

The book also documents the production of Swift’s epic Eras Tour, which kicked off in August 2023, including “personal reflections” written by the artist herself. 

In tandem with the book release, Target is also exclusively launching “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology” album as both a vinyl record and CD. The recording feature 35 tracks, including four acoustic versions of the following songs: “Fortnight,” “Down Bad,” “But Daddy I Love Him” and “Guilty as Sin?”

Two million copies of the book have been printed, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. Assuming the initial print run sells out, it would generate nearly $80 million in sales. Forbes puts Swift’s net at worth $1. 6 billion, including $600 million from music royalties and touring, a music catalog valued at an estimated $600 million, and $125 million in real estate.

Swift alone could be a forceful enough economic engine to boost Target. The retailer’s latest sales and profit figures fell short of analysts’ expectations, while Target lowered its earnings forecast for the current quarter. Analysts say that inflation-weary consumers are after deeper discounts than the retailer can offer, or simply aren’t making as many discretionary purchases. 

“Consumers tell us their budgets remain stretched, and they are shopping carefully,” Target CEO Brian Cornell said in a Nov. 20 earnings call. 

That restraint seems unlikely to deter the Swifties, the singer’s rabid fans, as she prepares to wind up the Eras Tour in Vancouver on Dec. 8.

When Kamala Harris and Donald Trump campaigned in North Carolina, both candidates courted a state-recognized tribe there whose 55,000 members could have helped tip the battleground state.

Trump in September promised that he would sign legislation to grant federal recognition to the Lumbee Tribe, a distinction that would unlock access to federal funds. He ultimately won North Carolina by more than 3 points, in part due to continued support from Lumbee voters.

Now, as Trump prepares to return to the White House in January, the promise will be put to the test. He has Republican allies in Congress on the issue, and now the Lumbee, as well as tribal nations across the country, are watching closely to see what comes next.

Tribal nations typically receive federal recognition through an application with the Department of the Interior, but the Lumbee have been trying for many years to circumvent that process by going through Congress. Chairman John Lowery called Interior’s application process “flawed” and overly lengthy and said it should be up to Congress to right what he calls a historic wrong.

“It’s just crazy that we’re sitting here fighting this battle, and I have to tell you that I am real in 2024,” Lowery said.

Following the presidential election, the Lumbee hope there will be momentum behind their cause, but they face deep-rooted opposition from tribal nations across the country.

There are questions about Trump’s next move

Several tribes, including the only one that is federally recognized in North Carolina, argue that if the Lumbee Tribe wants federal acknowledgment, it should go through the formal process in the Department of the Interior. One person familiar with Trump’s thinking said the president-elect will require the Lumbee Tribe to do just that, and he won’t sign a Lumbee recognition bill. The person requested anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly speak about Trump’s views.

Trump’s spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, said “no policy should be deemed official unless it comes directly from President Trump.”

Federal recognition is of enormous importance, as it comes with access to resources like healthcare through Indian Health Services and the ability to create a land base such as reservations through the land-to-trust process. But before that happens, a tribal nation has to file a successful application with the Office of Federal Acknowledgement, a department within the Interior.

The Lumbee Tribe has applied for federal recognition, but that petition was denied in 1985 because it “could not establish the group’s descendency either culturally, politically, or genealogically from any tribe which existed historically in the area.”

In 2016, the Interior reversed a decision barring the Lumbee Tribe from reapplying, but the Lumbee have opted for the congressional route.

Gaining federal recognition through legislation is a rare but not unheard of path. But the Lumbee’s approach has stoked a simmering debate in both Indian Country and Congress about Indigenous identity and tribal nationhood.

The Lumbee have received support from members of both parties

Members of Congress from both parties have supported recognizing the Lumbee through legislation, including Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a member of the Cherokee Nation who campaigned for Trump in North Carolina and backed the legislation.

But perhaps the state-recognized tribe’s most ardent ally in Congress is North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who is up for reelection in 2026.

Tillis introduced the Lumbee Fairness Act last year and has been a vocal supporter of the Lumbee. In interviews with The Associated Press, several tribal leaders, lobbyists, and advocates said they were told by Tillis directly or by his staff that the senator is currently and will continue to block certain bills backed by tribal nations unless the leaders of those tribes support the Lumbee.

One of the bills he’s promised to block, according to those interviewed by the AP, is a land transfer that would allow the Tennessee Valley Authority to return 70 acres of land to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the only federally recognized tribal nation in Tillis’s state. It would allow the tribe to put the land in Monroe County, Tennessee into trust. The plot is part of the tribal nation’s homelands and contains the birthplace of Sequoyah.

“It’s appalling to me. It’s disgraceful,” Principal Chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Michell Hicks said. He said that Tillis told him earlier this year that he would stop any legislation dealing with the Eastern Band unless Hicks pledged his support.

Hicks is among the tribal leaders who question the validity of the Lumbee’s historical claims, and he said that is out of the question. At one point about a century ago, the Lumbee were known as the Cherokee Indians of Robeson County, and for many years now all three Cherokee tribes — the Eastern Band, the Cherokee Nation, and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians — have denounced this and been vocal opponents of granting the Lumbee federal recognition.

Representatives for Tillis declined to comment.

Tillis held up legislation last week that would have allowed for the preservation of the site of the Wounded Knee massacre. While doing so, he singled out the heads of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, who have backed the preservation measure, for not supporting his efforts to federally recognize the Lumbee.

“This is not about you,” Tillis said to the two tribal nations, who he acknowledged had been trying for a century to preserve the site of the massacre. “But you need to know that your leadership is playing a game that will ultimately force me to take a position.”

Tillis suggested it was a “casino cartel” in part driven by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and an Osage attorney named Wilson Pipestem working for the tribe, that is trying to keep the Lumbee from gaining recognition, which could one day lead to the Lumbee opening their own casinos. Tillis threatened to continue publicly naming tribal leaders and their employees who he felt were standing in the way of his bill.

In a statement to the AP, Pipestem said Tillis should “apologize to the Tribal leaders for his false allegations and unscrupulous tactics.”

Lowery acknowledged that Tillis has held up both pieces of legislation, but he said that Tillis has not done so at the direction of the Lumbee.

“If he’s put a hold on the bill it’s because he reached out to tribal leaders to see where they stand on his bill, and they apparently have told him that they’re not in support,” Lowery said. “So, he said ‘well, if you can’t be supportive of my bill, I can’t be supportive of your bill.'”

President Biden, first lady Jill Biden and members of their family are spending his final Thanksgiving holiday as president on Nantucket, per family tradition. 

Mr. Biden headed to a fire station on Nantucket, as he has in previous years. The family is staying at the house of billionaire David Rubenstein, where they have stayed for the past three years. 

This year, daughter Ashley Biden and son Hunter Biden traveled with Mr. Biden and the first lady. Hunter’s wife Melissa and their 4-year-old son Beau, Jr. also traveled with them and there may be other family members staying with the Bidens.

Start of Biden family Nantucket tradition

The Biden family has been celebrating Thanksgiving in Nantucket for over 40 years. Mr. Biden wrote in his memoir “Promise Me, Dad,” that “we had some great years in that span, and we had some lousy years, but whatever was happening, whatever bumps and bruises we were suffering, we put it all aside and celebrated Thanksgiving in Nantucket.”

Jill Biden wrote in her memoir “Where the Light Enters,” that the Bidens started going to Nantucket when she and the president started dating. 

“When Thanksgiving rolled around, we knew we wanted to spend it together, but we didn’t know where,” she writes. “My parents wanted us to join them, his parents wanted us to join them, and even Neilia’s parents had extended an invitation. We were touched and grateful, but it was stressful to think about choosing one family gathering over another, so I said to Joe, ‘Let’s go somewhere, just the four of us.'”

Jill Biden said that her husband’s then-chief of staff suggested Nantucket, which neither of them had ever been, but she said they decided “it sounded as good as anywhere.” 

“I packed a cooler with sandwiches and sodas, we loaded the boys into a station wagon and we drove six hours to the Cape,” she writes. “On a packed ferryboat to the island, we chugged past beautiful Brant Point Lighthouse and up to the pier. Joe and I took deep breaths of salt-tinged air as we got our first view of the shingled cottages that lined the coast … That first year, we stayed in one of those cottages, right on the water, paying one hundred dollars for the whole week.”

Jill Biden writes that Nantucket Thanksgiving became the family tradition for the next four decades. “With a few exceptions, we’ve made the trek every year since, creating rituals that would become a key part of our family along the way,” she writes.

“Once in Nantucket, we spend hours poking around in the shops, and on the Friday after Thanksgiving, we go to the Brotherhood of Thieves restaurant for lunch. We gather on cobblestoned Main Street on Friday evenings to see Santa Claus, watch the big Christmas tree-lighting ceremony, and sing carols. And for many years, we posed for a family photo in front of a charming seaside cottage with the sign in front that read: FOREVER WILD.”

Mr. Biden’s late son Beau proposed to his wife Hallie at the annual Christmas tree lighting in 2001 and they were married at Nantucket’s St. Mary’s church the following year. 

“Hallie always suspected it was Beau’s way of locking them into Biden Family Thanksgivings for all time,” Mr. Biden wrote. “And it worked. They were celebrating their twelfth anniversary at the end of the week, and Hallie had never missed a Thanksgiving. Even the year Beau was stationed in Iraq, she insisted we all keep the tradition and go to Nantucket.”

“The holiday trip was a constant in our grandchildren’s lives from the time they were aware, and they made it clear how much it meant to them,” Mr. Biden wrote. 

Mr. Biden’s fateful conversation about the future with Beau and Hunter

Mr. Biden wrote in “Promise Me, Dad,” that during Thanksgiving weekend in 2014, with Beau suffering from brain cancer, his decision about the 2016 presidential race weighed heavily on his mind. 

Mr. Biden wrote that in the kitchen in Nantucket, Beau told him “Dad, you’ve got it wrong … you’ve got to run. I want you to run.” He said Hunter agreed. “The three of us talked for an hour,” he wrote. 

Mr. Biden ultimately decided not to run that cycle, and Beau Biden died on May 30, 2015 — making that year the last year the whole family spent the holiday together on Nantucket.

“No Thanksgiving would ever be the same,” Mr. Biden wrote. 

Bidens return to Nantucket 

Jill Biden wrote that in 2015, the family went to Rome instead of Nantucket. “Nantucket was just another place to remind us of all that we had lost, like a photograph with Beau’s face cut out.”

But she wrote that their grandkids asked to return in 2016. “Thanksgiving was Nantucket. They missed the little shops, the ice cream parlor we always visited, the traditional Friday lunch. They wanted to watch the Christmas tree lighting and wander the cobblestone streets. They wanted to be together. To feel normal again.”

She wrote that they all “easily fell back into their old routines.”

Nantucket, she wrote, was “where we learned how to be a family — all the complicated story lines of birth and death, marriage and divorce, hurt and healing, love and love and love, coming together in this little town at the edge of the world.” 

Nantucket’s reaction to the Bidens

Jill Biden wrote in her memoir that when they drove down Main Street in 2016, store windows were flooded with signs saying “Welcome back, Bidens!”

According to the Nantucket Current, “residents have grown accustomed to over the past three years during Biden’s presidency” that “downtown hotels and inns are fully booked with Secret Service personnel, security teams, and White House reporters during what is normally a quiet holiday for the island.”

“Over the past three days, massive Air Force C-17s were flying in and out of the airport dropping off vehicles and equipment, while nearly a dozen Massachusetts State Police Troopers arrived on motorcycles aboard the Steamship Authority ferry on Monday,” the Nantucket Current said. “Meanwhile at Faregrounds Restaurant, chef Bill Puder is cooking up more than 200 turkey dinners for the Secret Service.”

Traffic and security advisories have been listed for the Christmas tree lighting on Friday. In previous years, they have participated in the Polar Bear Plunge on Friday as well.