Basic Books
 | |
| Parent company | Hachette Books |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1952 |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | New York, New York |
| Official website |
www |
Basic Books is a book publisher founded in 1952 and located in New York, now an imprint of Hachette Books. It publishes books in the fields of psychology, philosophy, economics, science, politics, sociology, current affairs, and history. Basic Books publishes new works in African and African-American studies under the Basic Civitas imprint.[1]
History
Basic Books originated as a small, Greenwich Village–based book club marketed to psychoanalysts. Arthur Rosenthal took over the book club in 1950, and under his ownership it soon began producing original books, mostly in the behavioral sciences. Early successes included Ernest Jones’ The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, as well as works by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson. Irving Kristol joined Basic Books in 1960, and helped Basic to expand into the social sciences. Harper & Row purchased the company in 1969, by which time Basic was already renowned for producing intellectual books which appealed to both academic and trade markets.[2]
In 1997, HarperCollins announced that it would merge Basic Books into its trade publishing program, effectively closing the imprint. That same year, Basic was purchased by the newly created Perseus Books Group.[3]
Authors
Basic's list of authors includes:
- Christopher Andrew
- Anthony Appiah
- Isaac Asimov
- Robert Axelrod
- Edward E. Baptist
- Susan R. Barry
- Daniel Bell
- John Bradshaw
- Allan Brandt
- Richard Brookhiser
- Zbigniew Brzezinski
- William F. Buckley
- Stephen Carter
- Iris Chang
- George Chauncey
- Stephanie Coontz
- Dinesh D’Souza
- Devra Davis
- Richard Dawkins
- Edward de Bono
- Hernando de Soto
- Jared Diamond
- Michael Eric Dyson
- Thomas B. Edsall
- Richard Florida
- Douglas Hofstadter
- Thomas Maier
- Donald Norman
- Robert Nozick
- Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
- James T. Patterson
- Orlando Patterson
- Jean Piaget
- David Pietrusza
- Steven Pinker
- Karl Popper
- Samantha Power
- Diane Ravitch
- Eugene Rogan
- Juliet Schor
- Brent Scowcroft
- Anne-Marie Slaughter
- Lee Smolin
- Timothy Snyder
- Thomas Sowell
- Ian Stewart
- Cass Sunstein
- Beverly Daniel Tatum
- Lester Thurow
- Sherry Turkle
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
- Michael Walzer
- Elizabeth Warren
- George Weigel
- Steven Weinberg
- Cornel West
- Frank Wilczek
- A.N. Wilson
- Bee Wilson
- James Q. Wilson
- Irvin Yalom
- Shing-Tung Yau
- Fareed Zakaria
- Harald Fritzsch
References
- ↑ "Basic Books - About Us". Basic Books. Retrieved 12 October 2014.
- ↑ Basic Books: A History, 1950-2000 (New York: Basic Books, 2000).
- ↑ Doreen Carvajal (August 22, 1997). "HarperCollins Selling Basic Books Unit to Venture Capital Firm". New York Times.