Do You Teach History?

The National Book Foundation presented Robert A. Caro the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 2016 National Book Awards.

In The Fix, Jonathan Tepperman, managing editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, identifies ten pervasive and seemingly impossible challenges—including immigration reform, economic stagnation, political gridlock, corruption, and Islamist extremism—and shows that each has a solution, and not merely a hypothetical one.

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD by Colson Whitehead was honored as the 2016 National Book Award Winner in Fiction.

The finalists for the 2016 Book Awards were announced and two were published by Knopf Doubleday.

President Obama awarded Sandra Cisneros and Moises Kaufman a National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists by the United States government.

Poet Sharon Olds received the Academy of American Poets’ 2016 Wallace Stevens Award. Given annually to recognize outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry, the award was established in 1994, and carries a $100,000 stipend.

William H. McNeil, the National Book Award winning historian and professor, who expanded the view of world history, passed away on Friday. He was 98 years old.

Elie Wiesel, a survivor at Auschwitz and educator to millions about the horrors of Nazi concentration camps, died at the age of 87.

Rogue Justice reveals the power of rogue actors to compromise the rule of law. It reveals that the very things the founding fathers feared—detention and killing by executive fiat, without judicial review; the use of the General Warrant; and a deferential attitude on the part of the courts towards the executive in charge—have become a disturbing new reality in post-9/11 America.

Flora Fraser was awarded the 2016 George Washington Prize for THE WASHINGTONS on May 25 at a black-tie gala at the Mount Vernon estate

Leading historian of modern Germany, Fritz Stern, died on Wednesday. He was 90 years old.

The 2016 Pulitzer Prizes, honoring excellence in Journalism and the Arts, were announced recently and Knopf Doubleday is delighted to have published two winners—Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of New America by T.J. Stiles for history and Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick for general non-fiction.