Basic Books is a book publisher founded in 1950 and located in New York, now an

imprint Imprint or imprinting may refer to: Entertainment * ''Imprint'' (TV series), Canadian television series * "Imprint" (''Masters of Horror''), episode of TV show ''Masters of Horror'' * ''Imprint'' (film), a 2007 independent drama/thriller film ...

Hachette Book Group Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a publishing company owned by Hachette Livre, the largest publishing company in France, and the third largest trade and educational publisher in the world. Hachette Livre is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lagardère Grou ...

. It publishes books in the fields of

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...

science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...

, current affairs, and

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

History

Basic Books originated as a small

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. 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's ''The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud'', as well as works by

Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthro ...

Jean Piaget Jean William Fritz Piaget (, , ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called " genetic epistemolog ...

and

Erik Erikson Erik Homburger Erikson (born Erik Salomonsen; 15 June 1902 – 12 May 1994) was a German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychological development of human beings. He coined the phrase identity cr ...

Irving Kristol Irving Kristol (; January 22, 1920 – September 18, 2009) was an American journalist who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism". As a founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectual ...

joined Basic Books in 1960, and helped Basic to expand into the social sciences.

Harper & Row Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins based in New York City. History J. & J. Harper (1817–1833) James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishin ...

purchased the company in 1969. In 1997,

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...

announced that it would merge Basic Books into its trade publishing program, effectively closing the imprint and ending its publishing of serious academic books. That same year, Basic was purchased by the newly created

Perseus Books Group Perseus Books Group was an American publishing company founded in 1996 by investor Frank Pearl. Perseus acquired the trade publishing division of Addison-Wesley (including the Merloyd Lawrence imprint) in 1997. It was named Publisher of the Ye ...

. Perseus's publishing business was acquired by

in 2016. In 2018, Seal Press became an imprint of Basic.

Authors

Basic's list of authors includes: *

Stephon Alexander Stephon Alexander is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, musician, and author who blends the worlds of theoretical physics and jazz music. Personal life and education Alexander was born in Trinidad and moved to the United States when he was e ...

* Edward E. Baptist *

H.W. Brands Henry William Brands Jr. (born August 7, 1953) is an American historian. He holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his PhD in history in 1985. He has authored 30 books on U.S. histor ...

Zbigniew Brzezinski Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński ( , ; March 28, 1928 – May 26, 2017), or Zbig, was a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist. He served as a counselor to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was President Jimmy Carter's ...

Iris Chang Iris Shun-Ru Chang (March 28, 1968November 9, 2004) was a Chinese American journalist, author of historical books and political activist. She is best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking Massacre, '' The Rape of Nanking'', an ...

Stephanie Coontz Stephanie Coontz (born August 31, 1944) is an American author, historian, and faculty member at Evergreen State College. She teaches history and family studies and is Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Fami ...

Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An ath ...

Andrea Dworkin Andrea Rita Dworkin (September 26, 1946 – April 9, 2005) was an American radical feminist writer and activist best known for her analysis of pornography. Her feminist writings, beginning in 1974, span 30 years. They are found in a dozen solo ...

Michael Eric Dyson Michael Eric Dyson (born October 23, 1958) is an American academic, author, ordained minister, and radio host. He is a professor in the College of Arts and Science and in the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University. Described by Michael A. Fletch ...

Niall Ferguson Niall Campbell Ferguson FRSE (; born 18 April 1964)Biography
Niall Ferguson

Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superflu ...

Richard Florida Richard L. Florida is an American urban studies theorist focusing on social and economic theory. He is a professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and a Distinguished Fellow at NYU's School of Professional Studies. ...

* Martin Ford *

Howard Gardner Howard Earl Gardner (born July 11, 1943) is an American developmental psychologist and the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. He is cur ...

Jonathan Haidt Jonathan David Haidt (; born October 19, 1963) is an American social psychologist and author. He is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University Stern School of Business. His main areas of study are the psychology of ...

Victor Davis Hanson Victor Davis Hanson (born September 5, 1953) is an American commentator, classicist, and military historian. He has been a commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics for ''The New York Times'', ''Wall Street Journal'', ...

* Judith L. Herman *

Christopher Hitchens Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature. Born and educated in England, ...

* Douglas Hofstadter *

Leszek Kolakowski Leszek () is a Slavic Polish male given name, originally ''Lestko'', ''Leszko'' or ''Lestek'', related to ''Lech'', ''Lechosław'' and Czech ''Lstimir''. Individuals named Leszek celebrate their name day on June 3. Notable people * Lestko * ...

* Kevin M. Kruse *

Lawrence Lessig Lester Lawrence Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic, attorney, and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard ...

Robert Nozick Robert Nozick (; November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino University Professorship at Harvard University,

Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. P ...

Samantha Power Samantha Jane Power (born September 21, 1970) is an American journalist, diplomat and government official who is currently serving as the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. She previously served as the 28th ...

Eugene Rogan Eugene Lawrence Rogan, (born 31 October 1960) is an American historian of the Middle East and North Africa from the late Ottoman era to the present. Education and career After completing his undergraduate degree at Columbia University in econom ...

Lee Smolin Lee Smolin (; born June 6, 1955) is an American theoretical physicist, a faculty member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo and a member of the graduate faculty of the ...

* Jacob Soll *

Jason Sokol Jason Sokol (born 1977) is an American historian and an associate professor at the University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. ...

Timothy Snyder Timothy David Snyder (born August 18, 1969) is an American historian specializing in the modern history of Central and Eastern Europe. He is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute f ...

* Tamler Sommers *

Thomas Sowell Thomas Sowell (; born June 30, 1930) is an American author, economist, political commentator and academic who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. With widely published commentary and books—and as a guest on TV and radio—he becam ...

* Ian Stewart *

Beverly Daniel Tatum Beverly Christine Daniel Tatum (born September 27, 1954) is a psychologist, administrator, and educator who has conducted research and written books on the topic of racism. Focusing specifically on race in education, racial identity development in ...

Sherry Turkle Sherry Turkle (born June 18, 1948) is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She obtained an BA in social studies and later a PhD in sociology and person ...

Eric Topol Eric Jeffrey Topol (born 26 June 1954) is an American cardiologist, scientist, and author. He is the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, a professor of Molecular Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute, and a ...

* Michael Walzer *

Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Ann Warren ( née Herring; born June 22, 1949) is an American politician and former law professor who is the senior United States senator from Massachusetts, serving since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party and regarded as a ...

George Weigel George Weigel (born 1951) is a Catholic neoconservative American author, political analyst, and social activist. He currently serves as a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Weigel was the Founding President of the ...

Steven Weinberg Steven Weinberg (; May 3, 1933 – July 23, 2021) was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interactio ...

Frank Wilczek Frank Anthony Wilczek (; born May 15, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician and Nobel laureate. He is currently the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Founding Direc ...

* Bee Wilson *

Richard Wrangham Richard Walter Wrangham (born 1948) is an English anthropologist and primatologist; he is Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University. His research and writing have involved ape behavior, human evolution, violence, and cooking. ...

Irvin D. Yalom Irvin David Yalom (; born June 13, 1931) is an American existential psychiatrist who is emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, as well as author of both fiction and nonfiction. Early life Yalom was born in Washington, D.C. A ...

References

External links

Basic Books websitePerseus Group websiteSamuel G. Freedman on the formation of Perseus Books
{{authority control Book publishing companies based in New York (state) Publishing companies established in 1950 American companies established in 1950 1950 establishments in New York City