Do You Teach Sociology?

By: Dr. Ron Lee, Associate Professor, Political Science; Chair, Department of Political Science, Sociology, and Criminal Justice; Director, First Year Seminar Program at Rockford University   In an age defined by its great enthusiasm for diversity, a serious concern with the differences between us requires that we advance our understanding of those differences beyond a

By: Matthew Gutmann, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Brown University My students are hard put to recall another writer, let alone an intellectual giant like Claude Lévi-Strauss, who inveighs against the dangers of literacy, as he does in Tristes Tropiques. It is a great discussion starter. By turns travelogue and scholarly treatise on disappearing cultures

Because what you read matters.   Subscribe to the Penguin Classics Newsletter here.   Greetings and welcome to the publisher’s office for a brief visit into the world of Penguin Classics where our editorial team shares some insight into our daily lives through classics. Meet us over socials where we post our newest titles and highlights from our 2,000+ title

By Brian Batugo Student posters celebrating Black and Asian American solidarity. Photo credit: Brian Batugo   Asian American history must be included in the broader context of US history, especially given the increase in hate crimes and incidents resulting from xenophobic and racist rhetoric that falsely blamed the Asian American community for the coronavirus. Catherine

By: Khaled Hosseini Inside a drawer in my office desk sits a stash of manilla envelopes. Inside each are some of the letters I have collected over a span of nearly twenty years from high school students across the U.S. In these writings, the students share with me, often quite poignantly, what impact reading The

Dear Educator, Teachers from across the country have written to me in the past year, facing pressure because they teach Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner. In some cases, their jobs were being threatened over their decision to bring this seminal book into their classrooms. That’s where the idea for this kit came from: to

By Camryn Banks Mónica Guzmán, author of I Never Thought of it That Way sat down with Elon News Network ahead of her lecture on Sept. 21   Photo by Max Wallace | Elon News Network Mónica Guzmán, author of Elon University’s 2023-24 Common Reading book: I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly

By: Samuel Shem With his latest novel, Our Hospital, out this month, author Samuel Shem reflects on the impact that House of God has had on doctors and medical students for over 40 years and reminds students of the essential truths of practicing medicine.  I never wanted to write a novel; it was sort of an accident.

Book bans have increased more than 1100% between 2020 and 2022.  The American Library Association (ALA) has reported an unprecedented number of book bans and “documented 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago.”

A Q&A Sarah Rose Cavanagh Cover design: Carol Chu. Author photo: Sharona Jacobs Photography   Statistics indicate that mental health problems like depression and anxiety have been skyrocketing among youth in recent years. The widespread isolation and disrupted learning during the pandemic years has only accelerated this crisis. The ever-present question today is, what changes can

Because what you read matters.   Subscribe to the Penguin Classics Newsletter here.   April showers bring May books! Check out the new classics we’re reading to celebrate the return of sunny days and warmer weather, and let us know on social media what you’re turning to (we’re @PenguinClassics everywhere). Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska A

In How Not to Kill Yourself, Martin chronicles his multiple suicide attempts in an intimate depiction of the mindset of someone obsessed with self-destruction. He argues that, for the vast majority of suicides, an attempt does not just come out of the blue, nor is it merely a violent reaction to a particular crisis or failure but