Do You Teach History? December Spotlight

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.

Joy Williams has been named the 2016 PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction honoree.

Congratulations to Mia Alvar, who has won the 2016 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction for her short story collection In the Country. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, and now available as a Vintage paperback, In the Country is comprised of nine stories that give voice to the women and men of the Philippines and its diaspora and explore the universal experiences of loss, displacement, and the longing to connect across borders both real and imagined.

Congratulations to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, author of Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence, who has been selected as the winner of the 2016 Templeton Prize.

Congratulations to Toni Morrison, who has been selected as the winner of the 2016 PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, which goes to a living American author whose scale of achievement in fiction, over a sustained career, places him or her in the highest rank of American literature.

Congratulations to the following Random House authors who have been selected as finalists for the 2016 George Washington Prize: Kathleen DuVal, author of Independence Lost; Flora Fraser, author of The Washingtons; and Robert Middlekauff, author of Washington’s Revolution.

First presented in 1950, the National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards presented by the National Book Foundation, whose mission is “to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America.” Congratulations to the Random House authors who have been selected for longlists in the following categories: poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.

Congratulations to the following Knopf Doubleday authors who have been shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction: Anne Tyler, author of A Spool of Blue Thread; Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life; Tom McCarthy, author of Satin Island; and Sunjeev Sahota, author of The Year of the Runaways.

Congratulations to Cristina Henríquez, who has been selected as a finalist for the 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for her novel The Book of Unknown Americans.

Congratulations to Knopf Doubleday authors Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex, Jhumpa Lahiri, author of The Lowland, and Annie Dillard, author of For the Time Being, who were announced as recipients of the 2014 National Humanities Medal.

Dr. Oliver Sacks died early Sunday morning at his home in New York City. He was 82.