Facts into Fiction: How genealogy and local history enriched the narrative of What Sammy Knew

By David Laskin   After a long career successful in narrative nonfiction (The Children’s Blizzard, The Long Way Home, The Family), I decided a few years ago to jump the fence to fiction. My first novel, What Sammy Knew, is the story of a high school senior named Sammy Stein who, in the first months

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Videos from the 2022 First-Year Experience® Conference are now available

We’re pleased to share videos from the 2022 First-Year Experience® Conference. Whether you weren’t able to join us at the conference or would simply like to hear the talks again, please take a moment to view the clips below.   Penguin Random House Saturday Event Saturday, February 12, 2022 | 8:00 – 9:30 pm EST

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Elizabeth Kolbert on Our Changing Climate and the Future Today’s Students Will Inherit

Contributed by Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future “I’m a realist,” Ruth Gates was saying. “I cannot continue to hope that our planet is not going to change radically. It already is changed.” Gates, then the head of Hawaii’s Institute of Marine Biology, had taken me out to

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