Penguin Random House Higher Education Newsletter

By Eyal Weizman

Penguin Press | Hardcover | 07/14/2026
978-0-593-83502-9 | 416 pages | $38.00

Combining architecture, geography, history, and human rights investigation, Eyal Weizman analyzes the transformation of Gaza's physical landscape and argues that architectural evidence is essential to understanding the conflict and its humanitarian consequences.

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Centennial

The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America's Future

By Fergus M. Bordewich

Knopf | Hardcover | 06/09/2026
978-0-593-80336-3 | 272 pages | $35.00

The spectacular story of America’s hundredth birthday bash—the country's first world's fair and a moment of reckoning for a nation barrelling toward the Gilded Age.

Other titles by Fergus M. Bordewich

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Righting Wrongs

Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments

By Kenneth Roth

Vintage | Trade Paperback | 07/21/2026
978-0-593-68697-3 | 464 pages | $21.00

Now in paperback

From the long-time head of Human Rights Watch, the fascinating and inspiring story of taking on the biggest villains and toughest autocrats around the world.This is a story of wins, losses, and ongoing battles in the ceaseless fight to rend the moral arc from the hands of injustice and bend it toward good.

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Summer of '71

Five Months That Changed America

By John A. Jenkins

Citadel | Hardcover | 06/30/2026
978-0-8065-4446-5 | 448 pages | $29.00

From award-winning journalist and author John A. Jenkins comes a revolutionary exploration of the summer before Watergate—a parallel world of a half-century ago when America faced events and crises strikingly similar to those of today—told through the lives and words of those who lived it.

Read an excerpt here

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Healing the Gun Violence Epidemic

Ending Violence, Rebuilding Communities, and a Trauma Surgeon's Vision for Restoring Hope

By Selwyn O. Rogers Jr., MD MPH

North Atlantic Books | Trade Paperback Original | 07/07/2026
979-8-88984-247-7 | 208 pages | $20.95

For readers seeking solutions to finally end the gun violence that kills tens of thousands of people each year in the United States—from a Harvard-trained trauma surgeon treating victims in Chicago.

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The Jailhouse Lawyer

By Calvin Duncan and Sophie Cull

Penguin Books | Trade Paperback | 07/07/2026
978-0-593-83432-9 | 400 pages | $20.00

A searing and ultimately hopeful account of Calvin Duncan, “the most extraordinary jailhouse lawyer of our time” (Sister Helen Prejean), and his thirty-year path through Angola after a wrongful murder conviction, his coming-of-age as a legal mind while imprisoned, and his continued advocacy for those on the inside.

Read an excerpt here

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Beirut Fragments

A War Memoir

By Jean Said Makdisi; Introduction by Angela Flournoy

Outsider Editions | Trade Paperback | 07/14/2026
978-0-385-55227-1 | 320 pages | $22.00

New in paperback

A landmark memoir that stands as a testament to survival, memory, dignity, and the stubborn beauty of insisting on one’s place in the world. Amid ongoing regional violence and global patterns of displacement and erasure, Beirut Fragments offers a rare, layered perspective on identity, endurance, and the radical act of staying put when the world tries to unroot you.

Other Rivers
A Chinese Education

Peter Hessler

Format: Trade Paperback
464 pages
Publisher: Penguin Books