The Open Road Blog

Jewish American Heritage Month celebrates "generations of Jewish Americans who have helped form the fabric of American history, culture and society." It’s supported by the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration (from which the image at left came), the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, the National Park Service, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Open Road is proud to participate in the tribute by offering new videos, essays, and excerpts on Fridays throughout the month of May. Join us on Twitter by using the hashtag #JAHM.

As our first contribution, ...

Your favorite show was on television. You had to walk the dog. You read the Cliff's Notes (or the review in the New York Times) and got the gist. And somehow, you never managed to actually read the book.

But when someone asks you about Bestseller X or Classic Novel Y at a dinner party, you fumble your way through the conversation and nod knowingly, right?

We consider ourselves smart, moderately well read folks. We’ve all got books that we meant to read—but just haven't gotten around to yet. We’ve got the best of intentions, but somehow there are ...

According to the Midcontinent Public Library and Based on the Book, more than 1,200 books, novels, short stories, and plays have been made into English language feature films—and that's just since 1980! In fact, all but two of this year's Academy Award Best Picture nominees are based on books including The Descendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Help, Hugo, Moneyball, and War Horse.  

Of course it's no secret that Hollywood producers and bestselling authors don't always see eye-to-eye when it comes to writing the all-important screenplay adaptation; but with patience, respect, and determination, success—and maybe ...

Black History Month reflects on, celebrates and honors the African-American experience. Everywhere you look, black culture, talent, and political efforts have played an enormous role in shaping America's past and present.

African Americans have  revered good stories and storytellers. The story-telling history of Africa is rich and varied, and it remains a living tradition that continues to evolve and flourish in the diaspora today. "How many of us really know about the truly great civilizations of Africa, in their days as glorious and resplendent as any on the face of the earth?" asks Henry Louis Gates Jr., educator, author, ...

“I couldn’t not be a part of the movement,” says Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, about her involvement in the civil rights struggle. “The whole South was in an uproar because we were trying to change the very system that my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had suffered under.” 

To mark the national celebration of the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., we interviewed writers—and their friends, family, and colleagues—about their experiences during the civil rights movement.

Walker speaks about the problems faced by students participating in the movement, while Arnold Adoff, husband of the late ...

In celebration of Veterans Day, we honor Open Road Media authors and their families who spent time in the service.

Before World War II began, James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity and the newly published To the End of the War, served in the U.S. Army in Hawaii. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, which Jones witnessed, he was sent to Guadalcanal, site of some of the deadliest jungle fighting of the Pacific Theater. He distinguished himself in battle, at one point killing an enemy soldier barehanded, and was awarded a bronze star for his bravery. ...

Iconic Ebooks Are Titles That Are Entrenched in Popular Culture
and Are Now Being Introduced to a New Generation of Readers Digitally

(October 18, 2011) Open Road Integrated Media, a digital publisher and multimedia content company, announced today that it will digitally publish and market Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, the groundbreaking international bestseller that revolutionized female sexuality, as an ebook throughout the world in the English language. Fear of Flying will be the first title in Open Road's new Iconic Ebooks imprint. The ebook, with a new cover and an illustrated biography featuring never-before-seen photos, goes on sale today....

Today’s featured excerpt for Banned Books Week is Sophie’s Choice by William Styron. William Styron is widely considered one of the preeminent American writers of his generation. First published in 1979, Sophie's Choice is the winner of the 1980 National Book Award. It was also made into an Academy Award–winning film of the same name. The book has been banned from many libraries throughout its publication history. As recently as 2002, the book was pulled from the shelves of the La Mirada High School Library in California by the Norwalk-La Mirada High School District because of a parent's complaint ...

No need to be entering the classroom yourself to stock up on great literature! Here's our back to school sale for grown-ups. These titles are $3.99 and up through September 13. Whether you like short stories, memoirs, suspense, experimental fiction, or more, we've got a title for you! (And if you are looking for our children's sale, here it is!)

Georgia Boy by Erskine Caldwell

Fourteen stories that follow a young boy coming of age in a dysfunctional family in the rural South. Meet William Stroop, a young son of the South whose charming voice and mordant observations of family and culture ...

Open Road Media wishes you a wonderful Father's Day weekend.

To celebrate, we’ve assembled four original videos featuring insightful commentary about growing up with literary fathers from the sons and daughters of Andre Dubus, Stanley Elkin, William Styron, Terry Southern, John Gardner, and James Jones. Catch glimpses of these great twentieth century literary giants through the eyes of their children, listen to tales of their filial devotion and love, and discover what these men were like in their ordinary lives.

Literary Fathers: Gardner, Elkin, Southern, Styron

Literary Fathers: James Jones and Andre Dubus

 ...

William Styron was born on June 11, 1925, in Newport News, Virginia, to W.C. and Pauline Styron. One of the greatest American writers of his generation, Styron published his first book, Lie Down in Darkness, at age twenty-six and went on to write such influential works as the controversial and Pulitzer Prize–winning The Confessions of Nat Turner and the international bestseller Sophie’s Choice. Styron died on November 1, 2006. Today Open Road shares this special recollection from Rose Styron excerpted from the ebook edition of Lie Down in Darkness:

Recollection

I met Bill Styron soon after he had published Lie Down in ...

Editor's note: When it was published in 1979 William Styron's Sophie's Choice was immediately hailed by The New York Times as "an immensely important book." The following year the novel won the prestigious National Book Award for fiction. Two years later it was made into an Academy Award-winning film starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline. Today it is widely regarded as Styron's greatest literary achievement and appeared in The Modern Library's list of 100 greatest English-language novels of the 20th century.

Sophie's Choice tells the story of Stingo, a Southerner who moves to New York to become a writer. After ...

One of our goals here at Open Road is to provide readers with rare and never-before-seen content about our authors and their work.

To further that mission, we’re launching a new feature: each week we’ll showcase a different image from an author's archive or personal collection. This week we're focusing on William Styron, author of Sophie's Choice and Darkness Visible.

This photo shows Styron in 1926 at ten months old. He was an only child, born in a seaside hospital in Newport News, Virginia. As an adult, Styron would describe his childhood as happy, secure, and relatively uneventful. To ...

"I have also met an absolutely beautiful girl, American, named Rose, with whom I get along right well," wrote novelist William Styron in an October 1952 letter to his father. 

Fresh off the success of Lie Down in Darkness, Styron was in Italy on a Prix de Rome, where he encountered Rose Burgunder. The following April, he sent another letter home—this one with slightly more detail: 

"I think it will probably interest you further that I am going to get myself married to the girl named Rose . . . I won't go into a lot of sentimental double-talk about ...

“Anyone has the right to write about any subject available to be written about. That’s what the academy is all about. That’s what art is all about.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

This February marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of Black History Month. This year also marks forty-four years since the publication of a novel that polarized America: The Confessions of Nat Turner, William Styron’s Pulitzer Prize–winning portrait of the leader of America’s bloodiest slave revolt.

In an exclusive interview with Open Road, Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of the nation’s foremost academic authorities on African American ...