John Updike will deliver the 37th annual Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities on Thursday, May 22. In the lecture, entitled "The Clarity of Things," Updike will examine the connection between America's art and its ideas by posing the question, "What is American about American art?" Updike has published several books of art history and criticism including Just Looking: Essays on Art (1989) and Still Looking: Essays on American Art (2005). His new novel, The Widows of Eastwick, will be published this fall by Knopf. The annual NEH-sponsored Jefferson Lecture is the most prestigious honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.

Two Random House titles were voted winners of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle awards:

Nonfiction
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington (Doubleday)

Autobiography
Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat (Knopf)

Random House finalists included:

Fiction: In The Country of Men by Hisham Matar — Nonfiction: Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA by Tim Weiner — Autobiography: A Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption and Death in Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya — Biography: Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee; Ralph Ellison by Arnold Rampersad A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917–1932 by John Richardson — Criticism: Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints by Joan Acocella

Every year the NBCC presents awards for the finest books and reviews published in English. Click here for a list of current and past winners and finalists.

The Random House Publishing Group is launching a pilot project to sell individual chapters of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die online. This is believed to be the first time a major trade publisher has offered readers the opportunity to buy digitized sections of a book.

Made to Stick is a creative guide to communicating ideas effectively, and is an ideal candidate for this pilot program because each chapter offers valuable stand-alone lessons on the key principles that make messages "stick".

Its six chapters and Epilogue will are now available for $2.99 each at www.randomhouse.com/madetostick. The introduction and index will be available at no charge to those who buy at least one chapter.

Click here to download the Made to Stick teacher's guide.