We are excited to present our new academic blog Debate this Book. Leading thinkers, such as Daniel Goleman, Azar Nafisi and Phil Zimbardo, will contribute essays on debates of the day—and you get a chance to respond. This unique blog blends polemic, commentary and discussion, all centered around books. Click here to check out the blog and add your voice to the debate.

Debate this Book now joins Random House's other academic blogs Common Reads and Make Me Required Reading.

Neil Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish, has won a 2009 National Academy Communication Book Award for "excellence in reporting and communicating science, engineering and medicine to the public."

Age of Wonder, Richard Holmes' extraordinary account of how science inspired the romantic generation, has won the Royal Society Prize for Science Books.

The Center for Fiction (formerly the Mercantile Center) has just announced the short list for the First Novel Prize 2009 (formerly the John Sargent Sr. prize) and American Rust by Philipp Meyer (Spiegel & Grau), The Vagrants by Yiyun Lin (Random House) and Woodsburner by John Pipkin (Nan A. Talese) are among the five finalists. The winner will be announced November 9th. The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti (Dial Press) won last year's prize.

David Wessel's In FED We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic (Crown Business) is among six finalists for FT/Goldman Sachs 2009 Business Book of the Year.

William D. Cohan's The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co. (Anchor) won the award in 2007.

The Man Booker Prize 2009 short list has been announced and The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt, which will be available from Knopf on October 6, is among the six finalists. A.S. Byatt is in the running for a second win—her novel Possession won the Booker Prize in 1990.