James Hamblin, author portrait

James Hamblin

James Hamblin is a writer and senior editor at The Atlantic and the author of the books Clean and If Our Bodies Could Talk. He hosts the video series "If Our Bodies Could Talk," for which he was a finalist in the 2015 Webby Awards for Best Web Personality. He is the recipient of a 2015 Yale University Poynter Fellowship in Journalism. His work has been featured in/on The New York Times, Politico magazine, NPR, BBC, MSNBC, New York, The Awl, and The Colbert Report. He's based in Brooklyn, NY.
If Our Bodies Could Talk

Books

If Our Bodies Could Talk

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 291 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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