Basic Books is a book publisher founded in 1950 and located in New York, now an imprint of Hachette Book Group. It publishes books in the fields of

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

, philosophy,

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analy ...

science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that stud ...

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and ...

, current affairs, and

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

History

Basic Books originated as a small

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

-based book club marketed to psychoanalysts. Arthur Rosenthal took over the book club in 1950, and under his ownership it soon began producing original books, mostly in the behavioral sciences. Early successes included Ernest Jones's ''The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud'', as well as works by

Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthro ...

Jean Piaget Jean William Fritz Piaget (, , ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology ...

and Erik Erikson.

Irving Kristol Irving Kristol (; January 22, 1920 – September 18, 2009) was an American journalist who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism". As a founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectual ...

joined Basic Books in 1960, and helped Basic to expand into the social sciences. Harper & Row purchased the company in 1969. In 1997,

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News C ...

announced that it would merge Basic Books into its trade publishing program, effectively closing the imprint and ending its publishing of serious academic books. That same year, Basic was purchased by the newly created Perseus Books Group. Perseus's publishing business was acquired by Hachette Book Group in 2016. In 2018, Seal Press became an imprint of Basic.

Authors

Basic's list of authors includes: * Stephon Alexander * Edward E. Baptist * H.W. Brands * Zbigniew Brzezinski *

Iris Chang Iris Shun-Ru Chang (March 28, 1968November 9, 2004) was a Chinese American journalist, author of historical books and political activist. She is best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking Massacre, ''The Rape of Nanking'', and ...

* Stephanie Coontz * Richard Dawkins * Andrea Dworkin * Michael Eric Dyson * Niall Ferguson * Richard Feynman * Richard Florida * Martin Ford * Howard Gardner *

Jonathan Haidt Jonathan David Haidt (; born October 19, 1963) is an American social psychologist and author. He is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University Stern School of Business. His main areas of study are the psychology of ...

* Victor Davis Hanson *

Judith L. Herman Judith Lewis Herman (born 1942) is an American psychiatrist, researcher, teacher, and author who has focused on the understanding and treatment of incest and traumatic stress. Herman is Professor of clinical psychiatry at Harvard University Med ...

* Christopher Hitchens * Douglas Hofstadter * Leszek Kolakowski *

Kevin M. Kruse Kevin Michael Kruse (born 1972) is an American historian and a professor of history at Princeton University. His research interests include the political, social, and urban/suburban history of 20th-century America, with a particular focus on the ...

* Lawrence Lessig * Robert Nozick * Steven Pinker * Samantha Power * Eugene Rogan * Lee Smolin * Jacob Soll * Jason Sokol * Timothy Snyder * Tamler Sommers *

Thomas Sowell Thomas Sowell (; born June 30, 1930) is an American author, economist, political commentator and academic who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. With widely published commentary and books—and as a guest on TV and radio—he bec ...

* Ian Stewart * Beverly Daniel Tatum * Sherry Turkle * Eric Topol * Michael Walzer * Elizabeth Warren * George Weigel * Steven Weinberg * Frank Wilczek *

Bee Wilson Beatrice Dorothy "Bee" Wilson (born 7 March 1974) is a British food writer, journalist and the author of seven books on food-related subjects as well as a campaigner for food education through the charity TastEd. She writes the 'Table Talk' colu ...

* Richard Wrangham * Irvin D. Yalom

References

External links

Basic Books websitePerseus Group websiteSamuel G. Freedman on the formation of Perseus Books
{{authority control Book publishing companies based in New York (state) Publishing companies established in 1950 American companies established in 1950 1950 establishments in New York City