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

Penguin Random House/Common Reads presents: unCommon Authors unCommon Authors is a monthly video series highlighting exceptional and unique authors talking about their books. Vauhini Vara, author of The Immortal King Rao and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, offers a personal exploration of how technology companies have both fulfilled and exploited the human desire for understanding

In The Art of Fighting, Priya Parker explains that we can’t form and grow effective relationships without a fight. She rejects the idea that conflict is abnormal or that good groups don’t fight. All groups change and evolve; indeed, it’s because people disagree that good groups flourish.   Chapter One: Why Is This Happening? When

Penguin Random House/Common Reads presents: unCommon Authors unCommon Authors is a monthly video series highlighting exceptional and unique authors talking about their books. Kalina Silverman, creator of Big Talk and author of Big Talk, is a journalist, speaker, and Fulbright ambassador whose work explores meaningful human connection and cross-cultural communication.   Kalina Silverman is the

Penguin Random House/Common Reads presents: unCommon Authors unCommon Authors is a monthly video series highlighting exceptional and unique authors talking about their books. Ravi Gupta, educator, civic entrepreneur, and author of The Invisible List, teaches us how to transform hobbies to habits in a book that is part memoir, part guidebook, part manifesto.   Ravi

PRH Education/Common Reads presents: unCommon Authors unCommon Authors is a monthly video series highlighting exceptional and unique authors talking about their books.   Sasha Bonét, author of The Waterbearers is a powerful new voice, telling the American story through three generations of Black mothers.   Sasha Bonét is a writer and cultural critic based in New

From Annie Jacobsen, the author of the bestselling Nuclear War: A Scenario, a book on a subject that has long orbited her reporting: biological warfare.   Chapter One Recombinant DNA One day in 1971, inside a laboratory at Stanford University in California, an American biochemist named Paul Berg conducted an experiment that would forever change the

Raised deep in the hollers of the Appalachian Mountains, Emilee Hackney knew little beyond the ridgelines and coalfields of southwest Virginia. At fourteen, Emilee meets Sam, who offers her a glimpse at a promising future together. As they begin attending services at Deliverance Christian Church, Emilee is thrust into the radical realm of Pentecostalism. Emilee

Drawing on more than a decade of experience building the global Make Big Talk movement, Kalina Silverman examines how meaningful conversation can help address loneliness, strengthen relationships, and foster a greater sense of belonging. Combining research, personal stories, and practical conversation prompts, Big Talk offers an accessible framework for cultivating empathy, trust, and authentic connection

PRH Education/Common Reads presents: unCommon Authors unCommon Authors is a monthly video series highlighting exceptional and unique authors talking about their books. A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge is a masterful portrait of a city under siege, in which cartoonist Josh Neufeld depicts seven extraordinary true stories of survival in the days leading up to

The New York Times bestselling author of True Biz retraces her path out of the hearing world and into the deaf community—and seeks to understand what it means to raise children who are different from her—in this emotionally rich memoir.   Two Boys Sometimes strangers approach me on the street and ask if my sons are twins. The first