Penguin Random House, author portrait placeholder image

John Muir

JOHN MUIR was born in 1838 in Scotland, and immigrated with his family in 1849 to the United States. In 1892, he and his colleague Robert Underwood Johnson founded the Sierra Club, of which Muir was president until his death; he was also influential in establishing four national parks. Controversial during and after his lifetime, his writings on wilderness preservation became the impetus for the modern environmentalist movement. Muir died in 1914 in California.

What Students Will Be Reading: Campus Common Reading Roundup, 2025-26

With the fall semester in full swing, colleges and universities around the country have announced their Common Reading books for the upcoming 2025-26 academic year. We’ve compiled a list of over 284 programs and their title selections from publicly available sources, which you can download here: First-Year Reading 2025-26. We will continue to update this

Read more

2026 Catalog for First-Year & Common Reading

We are delighted to present our new First-Year & Common Reading Catalog for 2026! From award-winning fiction, poetry, memoir, and biography to new books about the environment, current events, history, public health, science, social justice, student success, and technology, the titles presented in our common reading catalog will have students not only eagerly flipping through

Read more