Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author portrait
© Fran Ramos-Sabugo Rodriguez

Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a senior vice president for Public Affairs at Starbucks and the executive producer of the company’s social impact media initiatives. Prior to joining Starbucks in 2015, he was a senior correspondent and associate editor at The Washington Post, where he worked since 1994. Chandrasekaran covered Afghanistan off and on for a decade and was the newspaper’s bureau chief in Baghdad, Cairo, and Southeast Asia. He is the author of For Love of CountryLittle America, and Imperial Life in the Emerald City, which was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2007 by The New York Times.
For Love of Country

Books

For Love of Country

Register for the 2026 Penguin Random House First-Year Experience® Conference Author Events!

Penguin Random House Author Events at the 45th Annual First-Year Experience® Conference February 15-18, 2026 Seattle, Washington Hyatt Regency Seattle Click Here to RSVP A complimentary meal and a limited number of books will be available to attendees. Each event will also be followed by an author signing. Interested in hosting one of these authors at

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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

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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

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