Our Mission

A classroom the size of the world: that is the goal of Public Books. Here is where experts—scholars and academics and students of all kinds—share their hard-won knowledge with the widest possible audience.

Here we offer a portrait of the university to come: without walls and without borders, online and free for all. Wherever people gather to learn, there must be the university. And the ideas that universities discover, build, and teach may yet redirect our futures. And so, while the struggle to defend the university will be fought over many years, the fight to reinvent the university—and to build the ideas necessary for escaping our shared crises—starts now.

Read Public Books to learn what’s at stake. Read for literatures that have not yet received their due. Read to discover knowledge before the headlines. Read to build a public world.