Matthew Parker featured in upcoming PBS documentary Panama Canal

Matthew Parker, author of Panama Fever, will be featured in the next installment of the PBS documentary series American Experience. Panama Fever is filled with contemporary accounts and remarkable characters that help bring the experience of those who built the canal vividly to life. Parker's epic history shows how a small, fiercely contested strip of land made the world a smaller place and launched the era of American global dominance. A perfect companion piece to Parker's book, Panama Canal details America's difficulties and triumphs during the canal's construction and the United States' subsequent emergence as a global superpower. (Panama Canal | PBS | Monday, January 24th | 9PM EST)

2011 Alex Award Winners

DC Pierson's The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To, Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, and Helen Grant's The Vanishing of Katharina Linden were three of the ten titles awarded a 2011 Alex Award. An official award of the American Library Association, Alex Award winners are recognized as books written for adults that have special appeal to middle and high school students. For a complete list of our past winners click here.

• Nujood Ali (I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced) made history when she became the first child bride in Yemen to win a divorce. Click here to watch a video clip of Ali and her lawyer, Shada Nasser.