W. W. Norton & Company

W. W. Norton & Company

Founded	1923
Founder	William Warder Norton
Country of origin	United States
Headquarters location	New York, New York
Publication types	Books
Imprints	Countryman, Liveright
Official website	www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company is an independent American book publishing company based in New York City. It is well known for its "Norton Anthologies", particularly the Norton Anthology of English Literature and the "Norton Critical Editions" series of texts which are frequently assigned in university literature courses.

History

W. W. Norton & Company is the largest American book publishing company that has remained independent since its founding. It is the oldest and largest employee-owned publisher in the United States,^[1] for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, college textbooks, cookbooks, art books, and professional books.^[2] The roots of the company date back to 1923.^[1] Since the 1950s, Norton's college textbook line has expanded to include leading titles in economics, government, history, music, psychology, political science, sociology, and many other academic subjects. Several of their college textbooks, including The Norton Shakespeare, The Enjoyment of Music, A History of Western Music, and new and revised entries in the Norton Anthology and Norton Critical Edition series, have become bestsellers in the academic fields. The Norton Professional Books division was founded in 1985 with a line of psychotherapy volumes, expanding to include neuroscience, education, architecture and design books.

Norton acquired Liveright (the successor to the famous Boni & Liveright publishing house) in 1974, and Countryman Press (New England travel book publisher) in 1996.

Board of directors

• W. Drake McFeely, Chairman and President of W. W. Norton, has been a member of Norton's Board of Directors since 1990 and its Chairman since 2000.

Bestsellers

Norton's best-selling trade books  include the following titles: Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry; Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller Guns, Germs, and Steel; Pulitzer prize-winning historians Annette Gordon-Reed and Edmund S. Morgan's works', Patrick O'Brian’s critically acclaimed naval adventures; the works of National Book Award-winning fiction author Andrea Barrett; "Khruschev: The Man and His Era" by William Taubman, "Hitler: Hubris" and "Hitler: Nemesis" by Ian Kershaw, Liar's Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side and The Big Short by Michael Lewis; Fareed Zakaria’s The Future of Freedom; Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm; Sam Harris’s The End of Faith; The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri; A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess; The Red Book by Carl Jung; The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb, and others in several subject fields. In the social sciences and science, Norton has published bestselling books by such authors as economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, physicist Richard Feynman, and historians Peter Gay, Jonathan Spence, Eric Foner, Christopher Lasch, and George F. Kennan.

Distribution

Norton currently distributes books for several independent publishers,^[3] including:

• Albatross Books, sailing, photography, historical fiction and autographical works by Ferenc Máté, plus the annual Seven Seas calendar.
• Atlas & Co., publisher of contemporary and historical fiction, non-fiction, history and biography.
• Blue Guides, travel and cultural guide books in English.
• CIRC (Chess Information and Research Center), instructional books on chess written or co-written by chess grandmaster Lev Alburt.
• Coachbuilt Press, specialist publisher of high-end photography of historical automobiles.
• Countryman Press, acquired by Norton in 1996, is a publisher of travel guides, New England regional interest and history, and cookbooks.
• Dalkey Archive Press, publisher of the Review of Contemporary Fiction and literature, memoirs, and criticism from around the globe.
• Fantagraphics Books, which publishes graphic fiction and comics.
• George Braziller Inc., publisher of art and photography books, poetry, literature and history.
• Kales Press, publisher of nonfiction such as science, history, art, and memoir.
• New Directions Publishing, which focuses on publishing literature in translation, poetry, and recent classics.
• Odyssey Publications, Hong kong-based publisher of cultural travel guides and history/photo books on unusual and exotic locations around the world.
• Peace Hill Press, publisher of secular homeschooling books and supplemental materials on history, reading and religion.
• Quantuck Lane Press, publisher of "beautiful books of photography, art, and the eccentric, whether illustrated or not."^[4]
• Rio Nuevo Publishers, specialist publishers of American Southwest history, travel, culture, art, and cooking.
• Pegasus Books, publishing non-fiction, history, health, biography and mystery titles.
• Persea Books, publisher of literature including fiction, poetry and memoir from the United States and around the world.
• Pushcart Press, publisher of the annual Pushcart Prize literary anthologies and other books of literature and memoir.
• Skyhorse Publishing, books on sports, flyfishing, nature , history, narrative nonfiction, military history, gambling, business, and humor titles.
• Thames & Hudson, a publisher of illustrated books in art, architecture, anthropology, fashion, graphic design, photography, and travel.
• Verso Books, the self-described "largest radical publisher in the English-language world".^[5]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} About W. W. Norton
2. ^ The Business Week Stock Page for W. W. Norton & Company
3. ^ Books.wwnorton.com
4. ^ "Quantuck Lane Press; About the Press". Quantuck Lane Press. http://www.quantucklanepress.com/qlp.php. Retrieved 2010-04-25. 
5. ^ "Verso; Books With a Critical Edge". Verso Books. Archived from the original on 2008-02-29. http://web.archive.org/web/20080229160348/http://www.versobooks.com/verso_info/about.shtml. Retrieved 2008-05-17. 

External links

• Official Homepage
• Making the Cut - Chronicle of Higher Education