Penguin Press

01/14/2025

“Fantastic…almost like a 101 class on Noam Chomsky.” – Sam Seder on The Myth of American Idealism by Nathan J. Robinson and Noam Chomsky

Start listening:

Majority Report members provide the funds needed to keep our 5x award-winning show going. We say thank you to our members every day by giving them more than an hour of extra content during the Fun Half where you’re a part of the show when we take your calls and messages.

01/14/2025

“Required reading for those seeking to learn about the blood-soaked history of the American Empire. Without a doubt, Chomsky and Robinson have fulfilled their responsibility as intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.” - The Nation Magazine

Continue reading:

If ordinary Americans know one critic of the American Empire, it’s almost certainly Chomsky.

01/13/2025

Announcing America, América: A New History of the New World by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Yale professor Greg Grandin, coming this April.⁠
⁠
In a sweeping, revisionist work of American history, Grandin rewrites what you think you know about the birth of the United States. Rather than looking east toward our European neighbors, Grandin posits that our identity was in fact forged facing south, in tandem with Latin America.⁠
⁠
Naomi Klein calls America, América “Dazzling. Sweeping. Mind-altering. World-changing. This is a once-in-a-generation contribution destined to become our new reference for understanding the making of the modern world."⁠

Learn more: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/747326/america-america-by-greg-grandin/

01/08/2025

Announcing THE WORLD AFTER GAZA by Pankaj Mishra, an essential reckoning with the war in Gaza that reframes our understanding of the ongoing conflict, its historical roots, and the fractured global response.

“Guided by a determination to find an exit from the loop of endlessly repeating atrocities, Mishra leads readers on a search for meaning in modern history’s most depraved episodes. This is a rare text: courageous and bracing, learned and ethical, rigorous, and mind-expanding.” —Naomi Klein, author of Doppelganger

“In this urgent book, Mishra grapples with the inexplicable spectacle of stone-faced Western elites ignoring, and indeed justifying, the slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. Mishra reflects on the supposedly universal consensus that emerged from the Holocaust, as well as his own early sympathies for Israel, as he expounds on the terrible toll of this passivity in the face of atrocity.” —Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine

12/06/2024

We’re excited to announce the new book from Bryan Burrough, the New York Times bestselling author of The Big Rich and Forget the Alamo.

The Gunfighters is an epic look at the time and place that spawned the American West’s most legendary figures, from Jesse James and Billy the Kid to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid.

In this dazzling and fast-paced new book, Burrough knits these histories together into something much deeper and more provocative than simply the sum of its parts. All the legendary figures are here, and their escapades are told with great flair—good, bad, and ugly. To understand the truth of the Wild West is to understand a crucial dimension of the American story.

Coming 6/3/25.

11/30/2024

Happy Birthday to Mark Twain! We’re celebrating with an ARC giveaway of Ron Chernow’s forthcoming biography, Mark Twain, on sale with Penguin Press on May 13th. In this brilliant new work, Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature. Comment below for your chance to win.

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Enter between 11/30/24 and 12/7/24. Open to US residents, 18 and older. Void where prohibited or restricted by law.

11/15/2024

Mike Tyson has been villainized, lionized, and fetishized—but never, until now, fully humanized. We’re proud to introduce Baddest Man: The Making of Mike Tyson by Mark Kriegel, acclaimed New York Times bestselling author regarded as “the finest boxing writer in America.” A story about fame, race, greed, criminality, trauma, and the creation of the most feared and mesmerizing fighter in boxing history.

Photo by Albert Watson.

10/29/2024

We're proud to introduce Snowy Day and Other Stories by Lee Chang-dong, the Academy Award-nominated director of Burning and many other acclaimed films. These stories delve into issues of injustice, betrayal, and fear, exploring them on both personal and societal levels. ⁠

“What a gift to have these stories translated, finally, into English! Lee Chang-dong is a master of the inconclusive tale and a brilliant architect of landscapes in which the human figures are hopelessly dwarfed and muzzled by their conditions. Rich with tragic and pathetic ironies, and inflamed by a genuinely incendiary political anger, Lee Chang-dong’s stories give the same complicated pleasure as his films.” —Ari Aster, director of Midsommar and Hereditary

10/29/2024

We are proud to announce The Stained Glass Window by National Humanities Medal recipient and two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize David Levering Lewis.

Sitting beneath a stained glass window dedicated to his grandmother in the Atlanta church where his family had prayed for generations, preeminent American historian David Levering Lewis was struck by the voids in what he could know about his own ancestors. He vowed to excavate their past and tell their story.

There is no singular American story. Yet the Lewis family contains many defining ones. David Levering Lewis’s lineage leads him to the Kings and Belvinses, two white slaveholding families in Georgia; to the Bells, a free persons of color slaveholding family in South Carolina; and to the Lewises, an up-from-slavery black family in Georgia.

In The Stained Glass Window, Lewis reckons with his legacy in full, facing his ancestors and all that was lost, all the doors that were closed to them.

On sale February 11, 2025.

10/23/2024

Al Pacino’s New York Times bestselling memoir Sonny Boy features 32 pages of color photographs, walking the reader through one of the most storied careers in Hollywood history. Pacino shares never before told stories of his iconic roles, from Scarface to The Godfather, Scent of a Woman to The Irishman, and so many more.

“I think about my past, and I can’t come up with anything that could possibly explain how I ever ended up here, where my life is today. It had to be luck. Close calls here, close calls there. My grandmother used to say, ‘Sonny Boy is a lucky boy,’ out of nowhere, and my grandfather would say, “The kid’s got personality.’ These are the things you remember.” –Al Pacino, Sonny Boy

10/17/2024

From New York Times Book Review editor Lauren Christensen comes an intimate story about our most searing losses and brightest hopes, a memoir of losing a child before she can be born, and learning how to forge a path forward.⁠
⁠
With fierce, spellbinding prose, Christensen writes a love story in remembrance of her daughter Simone, while leaning into questions of the human paradox: How do we live when everyone who makes up our world will someday be gone? How can we mourn when the cosmic order has been turned upside down? And how can we continue to find hope in the darkness?⁠ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/752027/firstborn-by-lauren-christensen/

10/16/2024

"The human costs of the pursuit of dominance are for the most part kept out of the press, or not dwelt upon, and thus do not reach most of the public. Wars are sanitized."

Read an exclusive excerpt on Literary Hub from The Myth of American Idealism by Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson, on sale now.

The basic principles of contemporary American strategy were laid out during World War II. As the war came to its end, American planners were well aware that the United States would emerge as the do…

10/16/2024

Al Pacino chronicles his life story, from the streets of the South Bronx to the set of The Godfather and beyond, in his revelatory new memoir, Sonny Boy.

The audiobook is brilliantly read by Pacino himself, which (sound on!) you’ll get a taste of here.

Start reading 📖 and listening 🎧 today:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730575/sonny-boy-by-al-pacino/

10/15/2024

The Myth of American Idealism by Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson is now available. Both an urgent warning and a passionate appeal for activism, this is a must-read for those seeking to understand the true impact of American power on the world stage. Available now wherever books are sold.

10/10/2024

We are thrilled to announce The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong! In this big-hearted novel, Vuong returns with a narrative about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive. Available for pre-order now at www.prh.com/emperorofgladness

10/08/2024

Happy 5th anniversary to Zadie Smith’s first short story collection, Grand Union! ✨

Zadie's first short story collection, Grand Union, turns 5 today! ✨✨

A sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us. Have you read it yet?

Photo credit: via Instagram