Berkshire Publishing Group was founded in 1995 by publisher and author Karen Christensen and anthropologist David Levinson as Berkshire Reference Works, an academic reference book producer, developing encyclopedias for Scribners, Routledge, Sage, Macmillan, H.W. Wilson, and ABC-CLIO. In 2000 the company was incorporated as Berkshire Publishing Group. It launched the Berkshire reference imprint in 2005 and in 2009 began publishing individual course titles as well as major encyclopedias. The company is owned by Karen Christensen and operates internationally from Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
Berkshire offers print and online publications on world history, international relations, sports, community, religion and society, popular culture and environmental issues - all with a uniquely global perspective. Berkshire’s publications focus on global perspectives, as conveyed they explain, with a particular vision: while many reference publishers and free online sources focus on the who, what, when, and where structure for presenting a topic, Berkshire specializes in providing resources from expert contributors who probe for deeper context and analysis - creating resources that help to explain how and why.
Berkshire also claims to make special efforts to bring the work of acclaimed scholars to a wide general audience that includes high school students, because they do not think students should be limited to reading the work of junior scholars who tend to rehash other scholars’ research, or to the offerings of non-expert writers hired to produce much of the reference material deemed “suitable” for high school students today.
They are the publishers of Patterns of Global Terrorism[1] as well as the Berkshire Encyclopedia of China,[2] the Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability,[3] and the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History.[4]