Where the Crawdads Sing, the #1 New York Times bestselling book by Delia Owens has been adapted into a major motion picture, coming to theaters nationwide on July 15.  For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found

Contributed by Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future “I’m a realist,” Ruth Gates was saying. “I cannot continue to hope that our planet is not going to change radically. It already is changed.” Gates, then the head of Hawaii’s Institute of Marine Biology, had taken me out to

Ian Manuel, author of My Time Will Come, was sentenced to life without parole at 14 years old. His memoir is a paean to the capacity of the human will to transcend adversity through determination and art—in Manuel’s case, through his dedication to writing poetry. Here is his brand new poem, “Genie in a Bottle”:

On Thursday, November 11th 2021, Penguin Random House Education hosted a special event for common reading. Moderated by Spenser Stevens, PRH Education Marketing Manager, the event featured:   Senator Mazie K. Hirono, author of Heart of Fire Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us Michael Sayman, author of App Kid Judith Heumann, author of Being Heumann

The 1619 Project is The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning reframing of American history that placed slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. The project, which was initially launched in August of 2019, offered a revealing new origin story for the United States, one that helped explain not only the persistence of

Carolyn Forché is being awarded the American Book Award for In the Lateness of the World, a tenebrous book of crossings, of migrations across oceans and borders but also between the present and the past, life and death. The world here seems to be steadily vanishing, but in the moments before the uncertain end, an illumination

U.S. News & World Report, which publishes the most widely quoted annual set of rankings for American colleges and universities, recently shared their list of “10 Books to Read Before College.” Describing these books as “assigned texts [that] are regularly used in freshman-level classes and offer students a chance to come together to discuss a

Contributed by Katharine K. Wilkinson, co-editor of All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis “I was shaking as I read the opening essay because I felt so empowered,” one of my students shared at the start of the fall 2020 semester. I’d spent the previous nine months co-editing the bestselling

Editor John Freeman reflects on his journey with the world of short stories in light of the upcoming release of The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story.  Click here  to see the full Table of Contents for The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story.   The Penguin Book of the Modern

  Left: Robin Broad; right: John Cavanagh   In the early 2000s, many people in El Salvador were at first excited by the prospect of jobs, progress, and prosperity that the Pacific Rim mining company promised. However, farmer Vidalina Morales, brothers Marcelo and Miguel Rivera, and others soon discovered that the river system supplying water

In How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates shares what he’s learned in more than a decade of studying climate change and sets out a vision for how the world can build the tools it needs to get to zero greenhouse gas emissions.   Bill Gates explains what needs to be done to make

Contributed by Kate Manne, author of Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women CW: This post contains descriptions of misogynistic and sexual violence On Friday May 23, 2014, I was an assistant professor just finishing up my first year of teaching at Cornell University. Scrolling through my Facebook feed, I saw reports of a horrible crime