Theo Baker

With the fall semester in full swing, colleges and universities across the country have announced their Common Reading books for the 2026–27 academic year. We’ve compiled a list of over 250 programs and their title selections, detailed below. We will continue to update this listing to provide the most comprehensive record of programs available anywhere

We are delighted to present our new First-Year & Common Reading Catalog for 2027! 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

We’re pleased to share videos from the 2026 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 Author Breakfast Monday, February 17th, 7:15 – 8:45 am PST   This

From Theo Baker, winner of the George Polk Award for his investigation that brought down Stanford’s president, comes a revelatory and gripping account of Silicon Valley hubris.   Seventeen-year-old Theo Baker showed up for freshman year at Stanford University as a tech-obsessed coder. But Baker soon discovered a culture that embraced corner-cutting, that vested infinite