W. W. Norton & Company

W. W. Norton & Company

Status	Active
Founded	1923
Founder	William Warder Norton
Country of origin	United States
Headquarters location	New York, New York
Key people	W. Drake McFeely President
Publication types	Books
Imprints	Countryman, Liveright
Number of employees	450
Official website	www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company is an independent American publishing company based in New York City. It has been owned wholly by its employees since the early 1960s. The company is well known for its "Norton Anthologies" (particularly the Norton Anthology of English Literature) and its texts in the "Norton Critical Editions" series, the latter of which are frequently assigned in university literature courses.

1 History
2 Best Sellers
3 Distribution
4 References
5 External links

History [edit]

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] of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, college textbooks, cookbooks, art books, and professional books.^[2] The roots of the company date back to 1923, when William Warder Norton founded the firm and became its first president.^[3] Storer D. Lunt took over in 1945 after Norton's death, and was succeeded by George Brockway (1957–1976), Donald S. Lamm (1976–1994), and now W. Drake McFeely (1994–present).^[4] 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 its 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 best sellers 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.

Best Sellers [edit]

Norton's best-selling trade books^{[citation needed]} include 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’ 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; The Ugly American by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer; and others in several subject fields. In the social sciences and science Norton has published best-selling books by such authors as Mary Roach, 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 [edit]

Norton currently distributes books for several independent publishers,^[5] including:

Atlas & Co., publisher of contemporary and historical fiction, nonfiction, history, and biography.
Blue Guides, travel and cultural guide books in English.
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.
Foreign Affairs Books, publisher of political science and current affairs books.
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.
Ontario Review Books, publisher of review books.
Peace Hill Press, publisher of secular home-schooling books and supplemental materials on history, reading, and religion.
Pegasus Books, publishing nonfiction, history, health, biography, and mystery titles.
Persea Books, publishing fiction, poetry, and memoirs 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.
Quantuck Lane Press, publisher of "beautiful books of photography, art, and the eccentric, whether illustrated or not."^[6]
Skyhorse Publishing, books on sports, fly fishing, nature, history, narrative nonfiction, military history, gambling, business, and humor titles.
Thames & Hudson, publisher of illustrated books in art, architecture, anthropology, fashion, graphic design, photography, and travel.
Verso Books, self-described "largest radical publisher in the English-language world".^[7]