W. W. Norton & Company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
W. W. Norton & Company is an American book publishing company that has remained independent since its founding. It is the oldest and largest employee-owned publisher in the United States and is well known for its "Norton Anthologies," texts which are frequently assigned in university literature courses.
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[edit] Company history
The company was established in 1923 when William Warder Norton and his wife, Mary D. Herter Norton, began publishing lectures delivered at the People's Institute, the adult education division of New York City's Cooper Union. Early in its history Norton entered the fields of philosophy, music, and psychology, publishing acclaimed works by Bertrand Russell, Paul Henry Lang, and Sigmund Freud (as his principal American publisher).
In the 1940s, Norton expanded its history textbook publishing with Edward McNall Burns's Western Civilizations, while the 1950s brought the addition of international figures such as the renowned authority on human development, Erik Erikson. Norton also developed the Norton Anthology series during the 1950s.
In the 1960s, the company initiated a poetry program that now includes Pulitzer Prize winners Rita Dove, Stephen Dunn, and Maxine Kumin; National Book Critics Circle Award winner B. F. Fairchild; National Book Award winners Adrienne Rich, A. R. Ammons, Gerald Stern, Stanley Kunitz, and Ai.
W. W. Norton & Company now publishes about 400 books annually in hardcover and paperback.
[edit] Norton anthologies
- The Norton Anthology of African American Literature
- The Norton Anthology of American Literature
- The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction
- The Norton Anthology of English Literature
- The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry'
- The Norton Anthology of Poetry
- The Norton Shakespeare
- The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction
- The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism
- The Norton Anthology of Western Literature
- The Norton Anthology of World Literature
- The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces
- Postmodern American Fiction-A Norton Anthology
[edit] Social sciences
In the social sciences and sciences, Norton has published 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.
Since the 1950s, Norton's college textbook line has expanded to include leading titles in economics, psychology, political science, and sociology.
[edit] Best sellers
Its best-selling trade books include Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry; Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller Guns, Germs, and Steel; 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 and Moneyball by Michael Lewis; Fareed Zakaria’s The Future of Freedom; Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm; and Sam Harris’s The End of Faith.
[edit] Distributees
Norton currently distributes books for sixteen independent publishers, including the following:
- Fantagraphics Books, which publishes graphic fiction and comics.
- New Directions Publishing, which focuses on publishing literature in translation, poetry, and recent classics.
- The New Press, a not-for-profit publisher that focuses on contemporary social issues, education reform and alternative teaching materials, cultural criticism, art and art education, international literature. and law and legal studies.
- Thames & Hudson, a publisher of illustrated books in art, architecture, anthropology, fashion, graphic design, photography, and travel.
- Verso Books, the "the largest radical publisher in the English-language world".
