Do You Teach History? December Spotlight

As announced last week, Margaret Atwood will write a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, due to publish in hardcover and as an ebook on September 10, 2019.   Her new book The Testaments* is set 15 years after Offred’s final scene in The Handmaid’s Tale and is narrated by three female characters. Atwood made a

The editors of The Times Book Review have chosen the best fiction and nonfiction titles this year and Penguin Random House is thrilled to publish 7 of those selected   “Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers is a page turner . . . among the first novels to chronicle the AIDS epidemic from its initial outbreak to the

We celebrate THE FRIEND by Sigrid Nunez, published by Riverhead, chosen by the panel of five judges from 368 submissions, as the recipient of the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction, announced Wednesday evening, November 14, at the annual National Book Foundation dinner in downtown Manhattan. Sigrid Nunez’s previous literary honors include a Whiting Writer’s Award, and

The Chronicle of Higher Education asked scholars that very question. Each year, more than 15,000 academic books are published in North America. A scant few will reach beyond their core audience of disciplinary specialists. Fewer still will enter the public consciousness. We invited scholars from across the academy to tell us what they saw as

Contributed by Jessica Brody, author of Save the Cat! Writes a Novel (Ten Speed Press, 2018).   In 2005, I was a walking cliché: a struggling writer attempting to sell my first novel, living in a studio apartment wallpapered with rejection letters. I had recently been laid off from my corporate job as a financial

From Shakespeare and Jane Austen to Gabriel García Márquez and Toni Morrison, this DK book features more than 100 biographies of the world’s greatest writers   Introduced with a stunning portrait of each featured novelist, playwright, or poet, biographical entries trace the friendships, loves, and rivalries that inspired each individual and influenced their work, revealing

Presenting the five finalists for the 2018 National Book Awards published by Penguin Random House     Fiction: FLORIDA by Lauren Groff (Riverhead Books, Penguin Audio) THE GREAT BELIEVERS by Rebecca Makkai (Viking Books, Penguin Audio) THE FRIEND by Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead Books, Penguin Audio) Poetry: AMERICAN SONNETS FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN by Terrance Hayes (Penguin Books) Translated Literature: FLIGHTS by Olga Tokarczuk,

Former President Barack Obama posted a message on his Facebook page on Friday, October 12, that began, “I wanted to share a handful of books and articles that speak to the current political moment and something I’ve been talking about around the country this fall.” Among the books that Obama has read and recommends that everyone consider reading before

Contributed by Heather Won Tesoriero, author of  The Class: A Life-Changing Teacher, His World-Changing Kids, and the Most Inventive Classroom in America (Ballantine Books, 2018). In the fall of 2015, I was a producer for the CBS Evening News. We were planning to do an endpiece for the show about Olivia Hallisey, a Greenwich, CT, teenager who

On Friday, October 5, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that it had decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2018 to Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege and Iraqi human rights activist Nadia Murad “for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.” Murad recounts her extraordinary

In 2014, investigative journalist Shane Bauer took an entry-level, $9/hour job as a guard at Winn Correctional Facility, a private prison in rural Louisiana. For the next four months, he reported for work outfitted with a hidden recording device, ready to capture the reality of life in private prisons for guards and inmates alike. For

Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15 through October 15, during which time we honor the contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans to the United States and celebrate their heritage and culture. Hispanic Heritage Month, whose roots go back to 1968, begins each year on September 15, the anniversary of independence of five Latin American countries: Costa