We're Penguin Random House, the world's largest English language trade publisher, bringing you the best in fiction, nonfiction, and children's books.
We like you. Want to know more? Sign up!
On the last Monday of May we pay tribute to the American men and women who have died in service to our country. To honor the occasion, here is an essential list of nonfiction and fiction which honor their sacrifices. From classic, and award-winning, novels to front-line journalism, these titles take readers back to the Civil War and up to the Middle East conflict.
Winner of the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction, Marine
Corps veteran Phil Klay’s Redeployment
takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us
to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who
returned.
The Mexican-American families who lived on one street in
Silvis, Illinoi sent fifty-seven of their children to fight in World War II and
Korea—more than any other place that size in the country. Eight of those
children died. It’s a distinction recognized by the Department of Defense, one
that earned that strip a distinguished name: Hero Street. Based on
interviews with relatives, friends, and soldiers who served alongside the men,
as well as personal letters and photographs, The Ghosts of Hero Street is the compelling and inspiring account of a
street of soldiers—and men—who would not be denied their dignity or their honor.
PACO’S STORY: A NOVEL by Larry Heinemann
Paco Sullivan is the only man in Alpha Company to survive
a cataclysmic Viet Cong attack on Fire Base Harriette in Vietnam. Everyone else
is annihilated. Brilliantly and vividly written, Paco’s Story–winner of a
National Book Award–plunges you into the violence and casual cruelty of the
Vietnam War, and the ghostly aftermath that often dealt the harshest blows.
They are the men of C-for-Charlie company—“Mad” 1st Sgt.
Eddie Welsh, Pvt. 1st Class Don Doll, Pvt. John Bell, Capt. James Stein, Cpl.
Fife, and dozens more just like them—infantrymen who are about to land, grim
and white-faced, on an atoll in the Pacific called Guadalcanal. This is their
story, a shatteringly realistic walk into hell and back.
Based on Evan Wright’s National Magazine Award-winning
story in Rolling Stone, this is the raw, firsthand account of the 2003 Iraq
invasion that inspired the HBO® original mini-series.
A searing reassessment of America’s foreign policy in the
Middle East over the past four decades—by a retired Army Colonel and New York
Times-bestselling author. From the end of World War II to 1980, virtually no
American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle
East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action
anywhere else outside the “open-ended war” in the Greater Middle East.
For the centenary of America’s entry into World War I, A.
Scott Berg presents a landmark anthology of American writing from the
cataclysmic conflict that set the course of the 20th century.
The experience of war has affected every generation in
the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and every soldier has a story to
tell. Since the year 2000, the Veteran’s History Project, a permanent
department of the Library of Congress, has been collecting and preserving the
memories of veterans. In the first book to showcase the richness and depth of this
collection, Voices of War tells a compelling, emotional, history of the
experience of war, weaving together veterans’ stories from in World Wars I and
II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf.
Henry Fleming dreams of the thrill of battle and
performing heroic deeds in the American Civil War. But his illusions are
shattered when he comes face to face with the bloodshed and horrors of war. Now
he’s a raw recruit, Henry experiences both fear and self-doubt. Will war make
Henry a coward or a hero? A vivid fictionalized account of the experiences of
an ordinary innocent young soldier on the battlefields of the American Civil
War, introduced by American writer, illustrator and historian, Wendell Minor.
A visual and informative guide to one of the longest and
most controversial wars in American history, now revised and updated. Explore
the people, places, battles, and weapons of America’s Indochina struggle. Now available for
the first time in paperback, DK Eyewitness Books: Vietnam
War tells the dramatic story of patriotism, tragedy,
bloody conflict, and heroism.
For more on these and related titles visit the
collection Memorial
Day 2017
The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals can have. Eventually rarity is all they are made of. The condor is an icon of extinction. There’s little else to it now but being the last of its kind. And in this lies the diminution of the world. How can you love something, how can you fight to protect it, if all it means is loss?
May is
Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, a celebration of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States. Originating with Congress in the 1970s, this celebration was initially only a week in May (a resolution signed by President Jimmy Carter). In 1992, Congress passed Public Law 102-450 which designated May as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month. The official Asian Pacific American Heritage Month website has more information, including audio, video, and information for teachers.
We’ve put together a collection of amazing titles featuring authors and characters from Asian and/or Pacific Islander heritage and cultures.
From the bestselling author of Girl in Translation, an inspiring novel about a young woman torn between her family duties in Chinatown and her escape into a more Western world.
Called “A writer to watch, a tremendous talent” by the Chicago Tribune, Bich Minh Nguyen makes her fiction debut with the deeply moving and entertaining story of two Vietnamese sisters. Aside from their petite stature, Van and Linny Luong couldn’t be more different. Diligent, unassuming Van works as an immigration lawyer in the Michigan suburbs where she resides with her handsome, Chinese-American lawyer husband. Beautiful, fashionable Linny lives in Chicago and has drifted into an affair with a married man. When Van’s picture-perfect marriage collapses and Linny finds herself grappling to escape her dead-end life, the long-estranged sisters are unable to confide in one another- until their eccentric inventor father calls them back home to the Vietnamese American community they fled long ago.
L is for Lee. Korean American Henry Park is “surreptitious, B+ student of life, illegal alien, emotional alien, Yellow peril: neo-American, stranger, follower, traitor, spy…” or so says his wife, in the list she writes upon leaving him. Henry is forever uncertain of his place, a perpetual outsider looking at American culture from a distance. And now, a man of two worlds, he is beginning to fear that he has betrayed both and belongs to neither. Chang-Rae Lee’s first novel Native Speaker is a raw and lyrical evocation of the immigrant experience and of the question of identity itself.
In Shauna Singh Baldwin’s enthralling novel, two fascinating, strong-willed women must deal with the relentless logic forced upon them by survival: Damini, a Hindu midwife, and Anu, who flees an abusive marriage for the sanctuary of the Catholic church. When Sister Anu comes to Damini’s home village to open a clinic, their paths cross, and each are certain they are doing what’s best for women. What do health, justice, education and equality mean for women when India is marching toward prosperity, growth and becoming a nuclear power? If the baby girls and women around them are to survive, Damini and Anu must find creative ways to break with tradition and help this community change from within.
The night before Janie’s sister, Hannah, is born, her grandmother tells her a story: Since the Japanese occupation of Korea, their family has lost a daughter in every generation, and Janie is told to keep Hannah safe. Years later, when Hannah inexplicably cuts all ties and disappears, Janie goes to find her. Thus begins a journey that will force her to confront her family’s painful silence, the truth behind her parents’ sudden move to America twenty years earlier, and her own conflicted feelings toward Hannah.
The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, caught in the tragic sweep of history, The Kite Runner transports readers to Afghanistan at a tense and crucial moment of change and destruction. A powerful story of friendship, it is also about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.
An impulsive act of heroism thrusts an arrogant young man into the limelight of Shanghai as China begins to form its own Justice League of powerful heroes. As the government creates their own Superman, will they live to regret the person they’ve chosen? Rising from the ashes of SUPERMAN: THE FINAL DAYS OF SUPERMAN and the death of the Man of Steel, will this New Super-Man step up to the challenge, or be crushed under the weight of his hubris and inexperience?
A sly debut collection that conjures the experience of adolescence through the eyes of Chinese American girls growing up in New York City—for readers of Zadie Smith, Helen Oyeyemi, and Junot Díaz
Narrated by the daughters of Chinese immigrants who fled imperiled lives as artists back home only to struggle to stay afloat—dumpster diving for food and scamming Atlantic City casino buses to make a buck—these seven stories showcase Zhang’s compassion, moral courage, and a perverse sense of humor reminiscent of Portnoy’s Complaint. A darkly funny and intimate rendering of girlhood, Sour Heart examines what it means to belong to a family, to find your home, leave it, reject it, and return again.
Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.
Once I realized that my family would be mostly male (I’m the only double-X here), I oriented myself toward the task of raising good men. But as those boys edge closer to actual manhood — as the 14-year-old’s shoulders get nearly as broad as his dad’s and the 12-year-old starts learning “embarrassing” information about sex and reproduction in his health class — I’m feeling my good-man project needs more specificity. I don’t just want them to be good. They’re already pretty good (kind, curious, mostly respectful, good huggers).
I want them to be feminists. I want them to understand, reflexively, that men and women are equal — not because I say so, but because it feels intuitive to them. Because it’s true.
I started talking about feminist issues with our sons when they were tots, and I basically haven’t stopped. We talk about how women are depicted in commercials and TV shows, how female politicians are sometimes characterized, and how women are often viewed or labeled in terms of their relationship to a man.
We also turn to books, which can do two things in any mom’s quest to raise feminist sons: help you educate yourself on the challenges and issues around feminism, and present your sons with stories of strong and forthright women and girls.
As always, but perhaps now more than ever, books are key to fostering knowledge in uncertain times. Here at Signature, we turn to the best books to understand our world, nation by nation. In an ongoing series, we present a look at a nation that’s on our minds through a literary lens, recommending reads by that country’s citizens, or by others who are intimately acquainted with that nation. We’ll update this rundown of what we’ve got on offer as the series grows. Happy reading, and happy learning.
Featuring books on Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, and Iran, with many more to come.
This week, in celebration of The Moth’s 20th
anniversary, Crown Archetype published THE
MOTH PRESENTS ALL THESE WONDERS: TRUE STORIES ABOUT FACING THE UNKNOWN
bringing together some of the best stories ever told on The Moth stage or on The Moth Radio Hour. Since its debut
in 2009, The Month Radio Hour now airs on more than 400 stations nationwide. For
this installment of Friday Reads we invite you to revel in the poignant, often
hilarious storytelling from some of the books contributors:
Celebrating the 20th
anniversary of storytelling phenomenon The Moth,, 45 unforgettable true stories about risk, courage,
and facing the unknown, drawn from the best ever told on their stages. Carefully
selected by the creative minds at The Moth, and adapted to the page to preserve
the raw energy of live storytelling, All
These Wonders features voices
both familiar and new.
An authentic, voice-driven memoir from a tough New York
City native whose unusual upbringing included the guidance of her Irish cop
father, her raucous Italian grandparents, and her vibrant mother’s millionaire
boyfriend. Fifth-generation New Yorker, third-generation bartender, and
first-time author Tara Clancy was raised in three wildly divergent homes: a
converted boat shed in working-class Queens, a geriatric commune of feisty,
Brooklyn-born Italians, and a sprawling Hamptons estate she visited every other
weekend.
Welcome to the perverse and hilarious mind of Sara
Barron. In The Harm in Asking, she
boldly addresses the bizarre indignities of everyday life: from invisible pets
to mobster roommates, from a hatred of mayonnaise to an unrequited love of k.d.
lang, from the ruinous side effect of broccoli to the sheer delight of a male
catalogue model. In a voice that is incisive and entirely her own, Barron
proves herself the master of the awkward, and she achieves something wonderful
and rare: a book that makes you laugh out loud.
Tattooed, angry and profane, this former standup
comic turned pastor stubbornly, sometimes hilariously, resists the God she
feels called to serve. But God keeps showing up in the least likely of people—a
church-loving agnostic, a drag queen, a felonious Bishop and a gun-toting
member of the NRA.
Tender and satiric, hilarious and humane, Dogwalker
plunks readers down in a land of misfits and the circumstantially strange–where
one young man buys drugs from a dealer who locks his customers in a closet,
while another lands a cat-faced circus freak for a roommate, and yet another
must choose between his pregnant wife and the ten-pound slug he’s convinced
will bring him a fortune. And throughout these stories moves a divinely
inspired collection of dogs: three-legged, no-legged, dogs that sing, that
talk, and that give birth to humans.
For more on these and other The Moth storytellers’ books and
audiobooks, visit Moth
Storytellers
Once I realized that my family would be mostly male (I’m the only double-X here), I oriented myself toward the task of raising good men. But as those boys edge closer to actual manhood — as the 14-year-old’s shoulders get nearly as broad as his dad’s and the 12-year-old starts learning “embarrassing” information about sex and reproduction in his health class — I’m feeling my good-man project needs more specificity. I don’t just want them to be good. They’re already pretty good (kind, curious, mostly respectful, good huggers).
I want them to be feminists. I want them to understand, reflexively, that men and women are equal — not because I say so, but because it feels intuitive to them. Because it’s true.
I started talking about feminist issues with our sons when they were tots, and I basically haven’t stopped. We talk about how women are depicted in commercials and TV shows, how female politicians are sometimes characterized, and how women are often viewed or labeled in terms of their relationship to a man.
We also turn to books, which can do two things in any mom’s quest to raise feminist sons: help you educate yourself on the challenges and issues around feminism, and present your sons with stories of strong and forthright women and girls.
