With the fall semester in full swing, colleges and universities around the country have announced their Common Reading books for the upcoming 2024-25 academic year. We’ve compiled a list of over 340 programs and their title selections from publicly available sources, which you can download here: First-Year Reading 2024-25. We will continue to update this

We are delighted to present our new First-Year & Common Reading Catalog for 2025! From award-winning fiction, poetry, memoir, and biography to new books about science, technology, history, student success, the environment, public health, and current events, the titles presented in our common reading catalog will have students not only eagerly flipping through the pages,

Carbon is the only element that animates the entirety of the living world. Though comprising a tiny fraction of Earth’s composition, our planet is lifeless without it. Yet it is maligned as the driver of climate change, scorned as an errant element blamed for the possible demise of civilization. Here, Paul Hawken looks at the flow

On March 31, 2025, the Penguin Random House First-Year Reading Advisory Board convened for their annual summit. The Board Members, representing a variety of public and private higher education institutions of varying sizes and geographic regions, came together to exchange ideas, discuss the complexity of the current common reading landscape, and provide feedback. The Advisory

When I was in college, and first set a goal for myself to one day publish a book, I had a few ideas of what success would look like. I wanted the book to be available in bookstores, like Barnes & Noble and Borders (remember those?). I wanted it to be published by one of

The government is a vast, complex system that Americans pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It’s also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it’s made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone. Michael Lewis invited his

We’re pleased to share videos from the 2025 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 event

PRH Education/Common Reads presents: unCommon Authors unCommon Authors is a monthly video series highlighting exceptional and unique authors talking about their books.   Through the unforgettable stories of five Atlanta families, this landmark work of journalism exposes a new and troubling trend—the dramatic rise of the “working homeless” in cities across America.   Brian Goldstone

2024 recipient of the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language given by the National Council of Teachers of English   Making Americans is a landmark work that weaves captivating stories about the past, present, and personal into an inspiring vision for how America can educate immigrant students. Setting

As the sponsor for the 2024-2025 Outstanding First Year Student Advocate Awards, we at Penguin Random House Education are proud to foster a universal passion for reading and to honor an extraordinary group of educators for their commitment to student learning. On February 18th, at the 2025 First-Year Experience® Conference in New Orleans, LA, we

Contributed by Ferris Jabr, author of Becoming Earth: A Journey Through the Hidden Wonders that Bring Our Planet to Life, an exhilarating guide to the workings of our planetary symphony—its players, its instruments, and the music of life that emerges—and an invitation to reexamine our place in it.  For more than two centuries, Western science

In Original Sins, University of Chicago professor Eve L. Ewing demonstrates that it’s in the DNA of American schools to serve as an effective and under acknowledged mechanism maintaining inequality in this country today. Ewing makes the case that we need a profound reevaluation of what schools are supposed to do, and for whom. This

PRH Education/Common Reads presents: unCommon Authors unCommon Authors is a monthly video series highlighting exceptional and unique authors talking about their books.   The bestselling author of Your Inner Fish takes readers on an epic adventure to the North and South Poles to reveal the secrets locked in the ice about life, the cosmos, and our planet’s future.

One of America’s greatest storytellers sheds light on an American tragedy: the Wounded Knee Massacre, and the ‘cultural genocide’ experienced by the Native American children at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. In September of 1890, the academic year begins at the Carlisle School, a military-style boarding school for Indians in Pennsylvania, founded and run by