The New Press is an independent
non-profit public-interest book publisher established in 1992 by
André Schiffrin
André Schiffrin (June 14, 1935 – December 1, 2013)Robert D. McFadde ''New York Times'', December 1, 2013 was a French-American author, publisher and socialist.
Life
Schiffrin was born in Paris, the son of Jacques Schiffrin, a Russian Jew wh ...
[New Press Founder André Schiffrin Dead at 78]
, Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...
. Accessed August 1, 2014. (
Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur) and Diane Wachtell,
[Robert D. McFadde]
"André Schiffrin, Publishing Force and a Founder of New Press, Is Dead at 78"
''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', December 1, 2013 publishing many books with a
left-wing
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
political viewpoint.
Details
In 1990
André Schiffrin
André Schiffrin (June 14, 1935 – December 1, 2013)Robert D. McFadde ''New York Times'', December 1, 2013 was a French-American author, publisher and socialist.
Life
Schiffrin was born in Paris, the son of Jacques Schiffrin, a Russian Jew wh ...
resigned as editor-in-chief of
Pantheon Books
Pantheon Books is an American book publishing imprint with editorial independence. It is part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.Random House, Inc. Datamonitor Company Profiles Authority: Retrieved 6/20/2007, from EBSCO Host Business Source ...
and within two years raised enough money to launch the New Press,
with former Pantheon editor Diane Wachtell.
Many of Schiffrin's authors from Pantheon, including
Studs Terkel
Louis "Studs" Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008) was an American writer, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for '' The Good War'' and is best remembered for his oral his ...
, left to join him.
[Remembering André Schiffrin ]
, The Nation
''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
. Accessed August 1, 2014.
The New Press is a nonprofit organization whose stated mission is to publish books that "promote and enrich public discussion and understanding of the issues vital to our democracy and to a more equitable world."
Schiffrin compared The New Press's role to that of public television, radio, and
university press
A university press is an academic publishing house specializing in monographs and scholarly journals. Most are nonprofit organizations and an integral component of a large research university. They publish work that has been reviewed by scholars ...
es, focusing it on books with riskier subjects;
many New Press books have promoted
social activism
Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range fro ...
and
liberal causes, which Calvin Reid of ''
Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...
'' has characterized as the publisher's main mission.
The New Press's business model combines publishing revenue with philanthropic grants,
and it has long focused on academic partnerships as well as staff and author diversity, running an intern program aimed at attracting candidates from minority ethnic backgrounds to the publishing industry.
Victor Navasky, writing in ''
The Nation
''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
'' in 2013, called it "a bold experiment in nonprofit, relatively radical book publishing," whose fifty books published per year were "virtually all
..of social consequence."
Schiffrin was editor in chief for more than a decade, and remained "founding director and editor at large" until his death in 2013.
In 2020 the board of directors included
Gara Lamarche
Gara LaMarche (born August 26, 1954) is the president of the Democracy Alliance, a network of liberal donors who coordinate their political giving. LaMarche previously served as president and CEO of The Atlantic Philanthropies. Prior to joining th ...
, Theodore M. Shaw, Sarah Burnes, Amy Glickman, and Diane Wachtell.
Notable New Press authors include
Alice Walker
Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was aw ...
and
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers (born Billy Don Moyers, June 5, 1934) is an American journalist and political commentator. Under the Johnson administration he served from 1965 to 1967 as the eleventh White House Press Secretary. He was a director of the Counci ...
.
John W. Dower
John W. Dower (born June 21, 1938 in Providence, Rhode Island, Providence, Rhode Island) is an American author and historian. His 1999 book ''Embracing Defeat, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II'' won the U.S. National Book Awar ...
's ''
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II'' was published by New Press and won the
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are awarded annually for the "Letters, Drama, and Music" category. The award is given to a nonfiction book written by an American author and published duri ...
in 2000.
Best selling New Press books include ''
The Good War'' by Studs Terkel; ''
The New Jim Crow
''The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness'' is a book by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar. The book discusses race-related issues specific to African-American males and mass incarceration in ...
'' by
Michelle Alexander
Michelle Alexander (born October 7, 1967) is an American writer and civil rights activist. She is best known for her 2010 book '' The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness''. Since 2018, she has been an opinion columnist ...
; and ''
Understanding Power'' by
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
.
Three New Press books were featured in ''
Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...
''
's Best Books of 2018: Sohaila Abdulali's ''What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape,''
AERA president
Vanessa Siddle Walker
Vanessa Siddle Walker is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of African American Educational Studies at Emory University and was president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2019–20. Walker has studied the segregation of t ...
’s ''The Lost Education of Horace Tate,'' and
Patrick Chamoiseau
Patrick Chamoiseau (born 3 December 1953) is a French author from Martinique known for his work in the créolité movement. His work spans a variety of forms and genres, including novels, essays, children's books, screenplays, theatre and comics. ...
’s ''Slave Old Man.''
Awards
New Press books that have won awards:
*1994: George Wittenborn Memorial Award from the
Art Libraries Society of North America
The Art Libraries Society of North America (also known as ARLIS/NA) was founded in 1972. It is an organization made up of approximately 1,000 art librarians, library students and visual resource professionals.
Activities
ARLIS/NA organizes activ ...
for ''Mining the Museum: an Installation by Fred Wilson'', edited by Lisa G. Corrin.
*1994: Lincoln Prize in Civil War History for ''Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War'' edited by
Ira Berlin
Ira Berlin (May 27, 1941 – June 5, 2018) was an American historian, professor of history at the University of Maryland, and former president of Organization of American Historians.
Berlin is the author of such books as ''Many Thousands Gone: T ...
,
Barbara Fields
Barbara Jeanne Fields (born 1947 in Charleston, South Carolina) is a professor of American history at Columbia University. Her focus is on the history of the American South, 19th century social history, and the transition to capitalism in the Uni ...
, Steven Miller, Joseph Reidy and Leslie Rowland.
*1996:
International Center of Photography
The International Center of Photography (ICP), at 79 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, consists of a museum for photography and visual culture and a school offering an array of educational courses and programming. ...
's Infinity Award for Writing to ''Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography'' by
Deborah Willis.
[Infinity Awards 1985–1995]
, International Center of Photography
The International Center of Photography (ICP), at 79 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, consists of a museum for photography and visual culture and a school offering an array of educational courses and programming. ...
. August 1, 2014.
* 2000:
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are awarded annually for the "Letters, Drama, and Music" category. The award is given to a nonfiction book written by an American author and published duri ...
for
John W. Dower
John W. Dower (born June 21, 1938 in Providence, Rhode Island, Providence, Rhode Island) is an American author and historian. His 1999 book ''Embracing Defeat, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II'' won the U.S. National Book Awar ...
's ''
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II''.
*2015:
Silver Gavel Award
The Silver Gavel Award (also known as the ABA Silver Gavel Awards for Media and The Arts) is an annual award the American Bar Association gives to honor outstanding work by those who help improve comprehension of jurisprudence in the United State ...
from the American Bar Association to Nell Bernstein. ''Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison.''
*2015:
Martin Duberman
Martin Bauml Duberman (born August 6, 1930) is an American historian, biographer, playwright, and gay rights activist. Duberman is Professor of History Emeritus at Lehman College, Herbert Lehman College in the Bronx, New York City.
Early life
Du ...
named an Honor Book for the
Stonewall Book Award
The Stonewall Book Award is a set of three literary awards that annually recognize "exceptional merit relating to the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender experience" in English-language books published in the U.S. They are sponsored by the Rainbow ...
, ''Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and the Battlefield of AIDS''
References
External links
*
Finding aid to New Press records at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
{{DEFAULTSORT:New Press
1992 establishments in New York City
Book publishing companies based in New York City
Publishing companies established in 1992