- American Book Company
American Book Company (ABC) was an educational book
publisher that published textbooks at the elementary school, secondary school and collegiate levels. It is most famous for publishing theMcGuffey Readers , which sold 120 million copies between 1836 and 1960. [cite web
title = McGuffey Readers World
publisher = The Paradigm Company
url = http://www.mcguffeyreaders.com/history.htm
accessdate = 2008-04-17]Company History
American Book Company was formed in 1890 by consolidation of
Van Antwerp, Bragg and Co. ,A.S. Barnes and Co. ,D. Appleton and Co. , andIveson, Blakeman and Co. [cite web
title = American Book Company Records
publisher =Syracuse University Library
url = http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/a/amer_book_co.htm] It was acquired byLitton Industries in 1967 [cite journal
title = American Literature in the Marketplace. Literature and Cultural Inquiry.
last = Betsky
first = Seymour
journal = Higher Education Quarterly
volume = 37
issue = 4
pages = 320-340
publisher =Blackwell Publishing
date = September 1983
url = http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-2273.1983.tb02009.x] and existed as a division of Litton Educational Publishing, Inc. until being sold to the InternationalThomson Organization in the late seventies. Thomson then sold its American Book CompanyK-12 assets toD. C. Heath and Company in 1981. ABC was absorbed into D. C. Heath and ceased to exist as animprint . Any remaining K-12 assets of American Book Company are now owned byHoughton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, which acquired D. C. Heath and Company in 1995.Many of the college level textbook rights of ABC/Litton were sold by Internation Thomson as well, to
Van Nostrand Reinhold , though some [cite web
title = Great Traditions in Ethics
work = Amazon.com
url = http://www.amazon.com/Traditions-Introduction-Theodore-Sheldon-Peterfreund/dp/B000OS76SC
accessdate = 2008-04-18] [cite web
title = Great Traditions in Ethics
publisher = Cengage Learning
url = http://academic.cengage.com/cengage/instructor.do?&disciplinenumber=5&product_isbn=9780495094982&contextelement=http://academic.cengage.com/cengage] remained under theWadsworth imprint at Thomson (nowCengage Learning ).External links
* [http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/a/amer_book_co.htm American Book Company Records] at Syracuse University
References
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