Left: Robin Broad; right: John Cavanagh   In the early 2000s, many people in El Salvador were at first excited by the prospect of jobs, progress, and prosperity that the Pacific Rim mining company promised. However, farmer Vidalina Morales, brothers Marcelo and Miguel Rivera, and others soon discovered that the river system supplying water to

Penguin Random House Author Events at the 41st Annual First-Year Experience® Conference February 12-15, 2022 Click Here to RSVP   While a complimentary meal and a limited number of books will be available to in-person attendees, PRH authors will speak virtually via screens set onstage and via Zoom for online attendees   Interested in hosting one of these authors at

Penguin Random House Author Events at the 40th Annual First-Year Experience® Conference February 15-19, 2021 Click Here to RSVP PRH virtual events are open only to registered FYE® conference attendees. To register for the conference, click here. Once registered for the conference, be sure to sign up for each event that you plan to attend in advance to receive login

The following letter was contributed by Christian Coleman, Digital Marketing Associate at Beacon Press.  We live in a time where a president makes barefaced remarks in speeches that African Americans and Latinx people are prone to violence and corruption. His statements, obviously, pay no respect to the centuries-long history of African Americans and Latinx people organizing together

Tom Barrett, Mayor of Milwaukee, read Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, which tells the story of eight impoverished families in his city who are threatened with forced eviction. Influenced by this multi-award-winning book, Barrett is launching an ambitious housing project to build or renovate 10,000 housing units in Milwaukee over the next

My name is Nadia Murad. I am Yazidi, a member of a small, monotheistic religious community whose holy temples and homelands are located in northern Iraq. Early in the morning of August 3, 2014, militants with the Islamic State attacked Kocho, my small village, and from that moment on my life—as well as the lives

Every spring for the past 23 years, the Horace Mann School (HM) in the Bronx, NY, has celebrated Book Day, a common reading event.  Book Day is a day when the entire school community—including students, faculty, parents, and alumni—dedicates one day to one book. Classes for more than 740 students and 150 faculty members are

Looking for ways to introduce social justice into your classroom? We have a list of four books that will help you do just that! From nonfiction aimed at exposing problem areas in our communities to fiction where you can truly empathize with the characters and their plights, we have just the books for you.

More than thirty years after its original publication, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel set in a frightening America of the near future where women-function only in the strictly defined roles assigned to them by men, remains unnervingly resonant to our current cultural conversation. The book as a result has returned to the bestseller list. Atwood has written a new introduction to the

In a new Ted Talk entitled “Solving Illegal Immigration [For Real],” decorated journalist and author Sonia Nazario suggests an alternative method to naturalization or heavy border policing to stem the flow of undocumented individuals into the United States. Nazario boasts a long and impressive writing career, during which she has shown immense dedication to featuring

The best defense against sly prevaricators, the most reliable one, is for every one of us to learn how to become critical thinkers. Critical thinking trains us to take a step back, to evaluate facts and form evidence-based conclusions.

by DONNA GEPHART, author of Lily and Dunkin (Delacorte Press, May 2016)   I’m not going to sugarcoat this. The statistic is grim and the stories behind it heartbreaking. Forty-three percent of transgender young people try to kill themselves. Why? Here’s one story: Because her parents isolated her from supportive friends and adults, refused to accept