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The ReadDown

Penguin Classics for Back to School

We’ve curated the following short list of Penguin Classics titles with a back-to-school spirit in mind. That is, these are books that speak to a timely issue, enlighten with diverse perspectives, and inform us with their enduring relevance in the world today.

  1. 1
    Passing Book Cover Picture
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    Passing

    by Nella Larsen

    Nella Larsen’s powerful and tragic story about racial fluidity resonates deeply today and brings a lot of important questions to the table about what we think about in terms of whiteness and the complexity around passing.
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    Paperback
    $15.00

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  2. 2
    An Enemy of the People Book Cover Picture
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    An Enemy of the People

    by Arthur Miller

    Arthur Miller’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic drama is a classic in itself, a penetrating exploration of what happens when the truth comes up against the will of the majority.
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    Paperback
    $13.00

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  3. 3
    Eichmann in Jerusalem Book Cover Picture
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    Eichmann in Jerusalem

    by Hannah Arendt

    Arendt’s writings on totalitarianism and “the banality of evil” illuminate current political debates with urgency, especially her controversial journalistic analysis of the mentality that fostered the Holocaust.
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    Paperback
    $19.00

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  4. 4
    The Left Hand of Darkness Book Cover Picture
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    The Left Hand of Darkness

    by Ursula K. Le Guin

    Many readers’ most recommended book for those new to sci-fi, and a pioneering feminist sci-fi masterpiece about a world where inhabitants can choose—and change—their gender.
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    Hardcover
    $26.00

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  5. 5
    Twelve Angry Men Book Cover Picture
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    Twelve Angry Men

    by Reginald Rose

    A memorable landmark American drama that examines the American melting pot and the judicial system that keeps it in check.
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    Paperback
    $15.00

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  6. 6
    The Light of Truth Book Cover Picture
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    The Light of Truth

    by Ida B. Wells

    The broadest and most comprehensive collection of writings including essays on the horrors of lynching by an early civil and women’s rights pioneer.
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    Paperback
    $20.00

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  7. 7
    We Book Cover Picture
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    We

    by Yevgeny Zamyatin

    The exhilarating dystopian novel that inspired George Orwell’s 1984 and foreshadowed the worst excesses of Soviet Russia.
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    Paperback
    $17.00

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  8. 8
    The Master and Margarita Book Cover Picture
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    The Master and Margarita

    by Mikhail Bulgakov

    The incomparable twentieth-century masterpiece of satire and fantasy, in a newly revised version of the acclaimed Pevear and Volokhonsky translation.
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    Paperback
    $19.00

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  9. 9
    The Diary of a Madman, the Government Inspector, and Selected Stories Book Cover Picture
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    The Diary of a Madman, the Government Inspector, and Selected Stories

    by Nikolai Gogol

    Author, dramatist and satirist, Nikolai Gogol deeply influenced later Russian literature with his powerful depictions of a society dominated by petty bureaucracy and base corruption.
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    $17.00

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