Random House, Inc. (founded 1925 by Bennet Cerf and Donald Klopfer) is a publisher of general-interest English-language books. They are based in the United States but have subsidiaries (Random House of Canada, etc.) and affiliates worldwide.
Random House was acquired by media giant Bertelsmann AG in 1988.
Random House had previously eaten a number of smaller publishers, thus giving it several well-known imprints in addition to its own, notably Ballantine Books, Bantam, Dell, Doubleday, Fawcett Books, Knopf and Pantheon Books.
According to the Random House website, "books published by Random House, Inc. have won more major awards than those published by any other company--including the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award."
Random House is also known for it's reference works, including Fodor's Travel Guides and the Random House Webster's College Dictionary, based on the work of one of our most popular noders.