Basic Books
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Parent company | Hachette Books |
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Founded | 1952 |
Founder | Arthur Rosenthal[1] |
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.[2]
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.[3]
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.[4] Perseus' publishing business was acquired by Hachette Book Group in 2016.[5]
Authors
Basic's list of authors includes:
- Anthony Appiah
- Isaac Asimov
- Edward E. Baptist
- Zbigniew Brzezinski
- William F. Buckley
- Iris Chang
- Stephanie Coontz
- Dinesh D’Souza
- Richard Dawkins
- Edward de Bono
- Jared Diamond
- Michael Eric Dyson
- Thomas B. Edsall
- Richard Florida
- Victor Davis Hanson
- Douglas Hofstadter
- Robert Nozick
- Jean Piaget
- David Pietrusza
- Steven Pinker
- Karl Popper
- Samantha Power
- Brent Scowcroft
- Anne-Marie Slaughter
- Lee Smolin
- Timothy Snyder
- Thomas Sowell
- Ian Stewart
- Cass Sunstein
- Sherry Turkle
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
- Elizabeth Warren
- Steven Weinberg
- Cornel West
- Frank Wilczek
- Bee Wilson
- Fareed Zakaria
See also
References
- ↑ Vitello, Paul (2013-07-08). "Arthur Rosenthal, Academic Book Publisher, Dies at 93". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-01-15.
- ↑ "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". The New York Times.
- ↑ Natasha Onwuemezi, "Perseus sale to Hachette Book Group completed", The Bookseller, 1 April 2016