George R.R. Martin, famous in his own right for heroes, villains, dragons, and direwolves, offers his rationale for why viewers should vote for J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings with its elves, wizards, and hobbits as part of the Great...

It was a dark and stormy night in 1815 when Mary Shelley began drafting  a ghost story in response to a competition suggest by Lord Byron. Find out more about Shelley, her life, and events that influenced what is called the...

Markus Zusak's The Book Thief is another novel high on the list of must-reads from The Great American Read collection. Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of former President George  W. Bush, and John Green of Crash Course series fame share...

Gabrielle Union discusses the role Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple, plays in her life. She stresses the importance of readers being able to find reflections of themselves in literature.

Ready Player One has been praised as a novel that captures the vitality, the allure, and the essence of the virtual reality experience. Speakers in a short video share their rationale for why Ernest Clines' dystopian novel should be...

Wil Wheaton shares his rationale for why readers should vote for Frank Herbert's Dune as their choice for the Great American Read program. His talk touches on the major themes of the novel and its central conflicts.

The narrator of Invisible Man is on a quest, a quest to find out who he is and what his place is in a deeply divided American society. An episode from the American Masters series asks readers to consider Ralph Ellison's acclaimed novel...

Rather than windmills, Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Confederacy of Dunces, battles against modernity. Find out why Professor Walter Isaacson thinks Toole's novel should get viewers' votes...

C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia is about far more than the adventures of a group of children in an imaginary kingdom. Find out what else it's about in a short Great American Read video.

What has copyright law have to do with the Dracula, the most famous vampire in history? Check out the twisted tale of how a fight over the royalty rights to Bram Stoker's novel gave immortality to the blood sucker.

What is Bloomsday? Why would thousands travel to Dublin on this day to visit sites depicted in a novel that is ridiculously hard to read? Why even bother with reading such a book? Find out by viewing a short video that suggests the...

Jenna and Barbara Bush, daughters of former President George W. Bush, and author Armistead Maupin share with viewers their reasons for selecting John Knowles' A Separate Peace as one of their favorite books.

An episode from the PBS Great American Read series focuses on Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and how the first-person narrative impacted two very modern women.

The ideas of the leaders of the Black Arts Movement were in direct contrast to those of Ralph Ellison. A clip from the American Masters film Ralph Ellison: An American Journey clarifies these conflicts between Ellison and the younger...

Douglas Adams' hysterical send-up of bureaucratic thinking, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is the focus of a Great American Read video that urges viewers to vote for one of the greatest satires since Gulliver's Travels.

For many farmers displaced by the Great Depression and the droughts of the 1930s, California represented the American Dream: a place to find work, to establish a new life, and to provide for their families. The reality they found, as...

"I was trying to remind myself of those simple, universal little pleasures, that we all love but we just don't talk about enough." Neil Pasricha reveals three secrets to leading a fruitful life that led him to write a best-selling novel...

Jane Austen wrote about strong women, social boundaries, and relationship dynamics in the early 19th century to educate her readers about the state of humanity. Learn more about the themes woven throughout her works,...

Suicide is one of the most tragic events in human existence, and it is also one of the least understandable phenomena in sociology. Emile Durkheim's 19th century work Suicide is the focus of a short analysis video that connects...

In this video [18:59], you will watch Latosha Rowley working with her fourth and fifth graders in a multiage setting as they discuss their novels - all historical fiction - in small groups. You will then join them as they decide on a...

This series of video lesson segments demonstrates a teacher engaging students in strategies that help high school students explore a passage from Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, The Scarlet Letter. These video segments include a bell ringer...