Penguin On Campus

The official Tumblr of Penguin US Academic Services. We get Penguin's great books into the hands of great educators.

[thepenguinpress]

It’s time for some Rest and Relaxation! We can’t wait for you to read this deeply unsettling, deeply funny book, which is bound to keep you up at night until you finish the final page. (Thank you to @chibooksellers for this photo!) #ottessamoshfegh #summerreading #bookstagram #fiction

[penguinoncampus]

"Beautifully written and with real insight into Jefferson and Adams, it's a worthy addition to the canon, and yet another compelling book from Wood."—NPR on FRIENDS DIVIDED, the latest from Gordon S. Wood

[pelikhan]

[penguinoncampus]

"[McGregor's] narrative of relations and contacts between the leading politicians and policy-makers in both countries, and of America’s interplay with the two, makes for a compelling and impressive read."—The Economist

[penguinoncampus]

A Black Man’s Murder Tears Apart a Town – Electric Literature

Racial tensions rise in “Buck Boy,” a new short story by James McBride

Read a short story by National Book Award recipient James McBride from his new collection, FIVE-CARAT SOUL, in Electric Literature.

[penguinoncampus]

Masha Gessen On The Hidden Family Histories Of Totalitarian Russia

A Russian psychoanalyst uncovers the truth of family legends in this exclusive excerpt from journalist Masha Gessen's new book, The Future Is History.

Read an excerpt from Masha Gessen's latest book, THE FUTURE IS HISTORY, now on BuzzFeed.

[penguinoncampus]

Kim family history should keep us from war. Unless a tweet goes too far.

Blaine Harden, author of KING OF SPIES, writes for The New York Times Opinion Section about North Korea: "As global anxiety mounts, remedial history is in order."

[penguinoncampus]

How One Man Helped Burn Down North Korea

The story of one of the most effective and brutal spymasters in U.S. history, and the beginning of an infamous love affair with napalm.

From POLITICO, an excerpt from Blaine Harden's KING OF SPIES.

[penguinoncampus]

“A magisterial second entry in this multivolume biography [by Stephen Kotkin]. He integrates a massive body of newly available documents with extant scholarship, comprehensively detailing the development of the U.S.S.R. and the nature of Stalin’s rule....Kotkin’s account is a hefty challenge, but an eminently worthwhile one.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

[penguinoncampus]

Are big tech companies trying to control our lives?

Should we be concerned about the growing power of tech giants? In his book, “World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech,” Franklin Foer says that more than their size, these companies are a threat because of the ways they shape how we filter information and the world. Economics correspondent Paul Solman explores the role of tech companies as gatekeepers.

Franklin Foer on PBS NewsHour talking about the existential threat of big tech companies, the subject of his new book WORLD WITHOUT MIND.

[penguinoncampus]

Pour One Out for Ulysses S. Grant

His Presidency was known for corruption, scandal, and booze. In a new book, Ron Chernow attempts to rehabilitate it.

"In a new biography, Ron Chernow, whose previous subjects include Washington and Hamilton (improbably launching the greatest musical-theatre work of our age), strenuously disputes the conventional view. Though he does the usual justice to the military saga of the Civil War, and Grant’s decisive part in it, his book aims to rehabilitate Grant as a politician and as President."—Adam Gopnik

[penguinoncampus]

Ron Chernow on impact of President Ulysses S. Grant

The historian behind the hit Broadway musical "Hamilton" is back with his seventh book called "Grant." Award-winning author Ron Chernow joins "CBS This Morning" to discuss the life of the Civil War general and 18th President Ulysses S. Grant.

Ron Chernow talks about Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States and the subject of his latest book, on CBS This Morning.

[penguinoncampus]

“Grant is vast and panoramic in ways that history buffs will love. Books of its caliber by writers of Chernow’s stature are rare, and this one qualifies as a major event….Chernow is clearly out to find undiscovered nobility in his story, and he succeeds; he also finds uncannily prescient tragedy. There are ways in which Grant’s times eerily resemble our own…Indispensable.”—The New York Times

[penguinoncampus]

The coming earthquake

Big tech is combining with our other big trends in a compound disruption.

On Axios, a breakdown of Franklin Foer's WORLD WITHOUT MIND:

"Our faith in technology is no longer fully consistent with our belief in liberty. We're nearing the moment when we will have to damage one of our revolutions to save the other. Privacy can't survive the present trajectory of technology."

[penguinoncampus]

Jonathan Losos, a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University, writes of the advances in evolutionary understanding in his new book, IMPROBABLE DESTINIES. In it, he seeks to address a longstanding debate in the field: Is evolution of certain traits inevitable, or random? If we “ran the tape” of Earth’s history again, would the same animals — and even ourselves — still emerge?

[penguinoncampus]

72 years after the bombing of Nagasaki, there are 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world

When will the narrative of nuclear war that started in 1945 come to a close?

Susan Southard, author of NAGASAKI: LIFE AFTER NUCLEAR WAR writes on nuclear weapons in the Los Angeles Times.

[penguinoncampus]

When Silicon Valley Took Over Journalism

The pursuit of digital readership broke the 'New Republic'—and an entire industry.

An excerpt from Franklin Foer's WORLD WITHOUT MIND appears in the September issue of The Atlantic.