News from RH Academic Resources

Our National Book Award Winners

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:23:31 -0500

]]>Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (Random House) has received the 2009 National Book Award for Fiction and The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T. J. Stiles (Knopf) has been announced as the Nonfiction winner.

Click here for a complete list of the 2009 National Book Award Finalists.

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2009 Asian American Literary Award Winners

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:11:17 -0500

]]>Jhumpa Lahiri has won the Twelfth Annual Asian American Literary Award in Fiction for her short story collection Unaccustomed Earth, and Ed Park's Personal Days was named a finalist for the award. Leslie T. Chang won in the nonfiction category for her book Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China.

Ajai Singh "Sonny" Mehta, chairman and editor-in-chief of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, was named the 2009 winner of The Asian American Writers' Workshop's Lifetime Achievement Award. Click here for more information.

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The Woodsburner Wins Fiction Prize

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:37:55 -0500

]]>John Pipkin's The Woodsburner (Nan A. Talese), a first novel about a forest fire accidentally set by Henry David Thoreau, has won the Center for Fiction's 2009 First Novel Prize. It was named the winner from a short list that included The Vagrants by Yiun Li (Random House). Last year's winner, The Book Thief author Hannah Tinti, presented the award at a ceremony on November 9.

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Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:03:36 -0500

Nam Le, author of The Boat, has won the Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction.

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Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:40:52 -0500

Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist who transformed Western understanding of the nature of culture, custom and civilization, has died at the age of 100. In Myth and Meaning, a collection of radio lectures originally delivered on the Canadian radio series "Ideas," Lévi-Strauss offered his insights from a lifetime spent interpreting myths and trying to discover their significance for human understanding.

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Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:17:43 -0500

Evie Wyld, author of After the Fire, a Still Small Voice and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of The Thing Around Your Neck, are on the short list for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, which celebrates the best work of literature (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or drama) by a UK or Commonwealth writer aged 35 or under. The winner will be announced on November 30.

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Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:10:02 -0500

The 2009 T.S. Eliot prize, has selected a shortlist of 10 poets "who have dreamed and who have dared", according to chair of judges Simon Armitage. He highlighted Sharon Olds's One Secret Thing, which moves from meditations on war photographs to an exploration of aging, as a collection that had moved the award-winning American poet to the next level. "She's well known as a highly confessional writer, who writes very personally and intimately about her family situation," he said. "But she seems to have pushed even further in this book."

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DEBATE THIS BOOK Blog Now Live

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:53:57 -0500

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.

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Science Book Prize Winners

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:39:18 -0500

]]>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.

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Edwidge Danticat wins Genius Award

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:21:33 -0500

Edwidge Danticat, author of Brother, I'm Dying, Breath, Eyes, Memory and The Dew Breaker, is a recipient of a 2009 MacArthur "Genuis" Fellowship. Danticat discussed the high honor and what she's planning to do with the $500,000 grant on NPR.

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Peace Prize

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:03:35 -0500

Peace by Richard Bausch has won the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction.

Authors and journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (Half the Sky, China Wakes) will receive the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Lifetime Achievement.

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First Novel Prize Shortlist Announced

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:46:49 -0500

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.

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In FED We Trust shortlisted for Business Book of the Year

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:37:29 -0500

]]>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.

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The Children's Book is shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:35:03 -0500

]]>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.

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Buzz Aldrin

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:34:32 -0500

Forty years ago, on July 20, 1969, Buzz Aldrin became the second human, minutes after Neil Armstrong, to set foot on a celestial body other than the Earth. The event remains one of mankind's greatest achievements and was witnessed by the largest worldwide television audience in history. To celebrate the anniversary of the historic moment, Aldrin recounts his harrowing and thrilling journey through space in his new book, Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon.

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