 | |
| Author | Multiple |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Reference |
| Publisher | World Almanac Books (imprint of Skyhorse Publishing) |
Publication date | November 28, 2023 (1st: 1868) |
| Media type | Printed Book |
| Pages | 1,008 |
| ISBN | 978-1-5107-7246-5 |
The World Almanac and Book of Facts is a US-published reference work, an almanac conveying information about such subjects as world changes, tragedies, and sports feats. It has been published yearly from 1868 to 1875, and again every year since 1886. [1]
The first edition of The World Almanac was published by the New York World newspaper in 1868 (the name of the publication comes from the newspaper itself, which was known as the World). Published three years after the end of the Civil War and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, its 120 pages of information touched on such events as the process of Reconstruction and the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.
Publication was suspended in 1876, but in 1886, newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, who had purchased the World and quickly transformed it into one of the most influential newspapers in the country, revived The World Almanac with the intention of making it "a compendium of universal knowledge." The World Almanac has been published annually since. From 1890 to 1934, the New York World Building was prominently featured on its cover. [2]
In 1894, when it claimed more than a half-million "habitual users," The World Almanac changed its name to The World Almanac and Encyclopedia. This was the title it kept until 1923, when it became The World Almanac and Book of Facts, the name it bears today.
In 1906, the New York Times, reporting on the publishing of the 20th edition, said that "the almanac has made for itself a secure position, second only to the forty-year-old Whitaker's Almanac of London, with which alone it can be compared." [3]
In 1923, the name changed to its current name, The World Almanac and Book of Facts. [1]
Calvin Coolidge's father read from The World Almanac when he swore his son into office. [1] Since then, photos have shown that Presidents John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton have also used The World Almanac as a resource. [1]
In 1931 The New York World merged with the Scripps-owned Telegram to form the New York World-Telegram . The World-Telegram subsequently acquired the assets of The Sun in 1950, and officially became the New York World-Telegram and The Sun. Ownership of the Almanac passed to the Newspaper Enterprise Association (another Scripps-owned business) in 1966, when the World-Telegram merged with the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Journal-American . [4]
During World War II, The World Almanac could boast that it was read by GIs all over the world: between 1944 and 1946, at the request of the U.S. Government, The World Almanac had special print runs of 100,000 to 150,000 copies for distribution to the armed forces.
In late December 1984, the 1985 edition reached first place in the category of paperback Advice, How- To and Miscellaneous books, on the New York Times best-seller list, with more than 1,760,000 copies sold at the time. [5]
The first version of the video game Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? , published in 1985, included a copy of The World Almanac in the purchase. [6]
From the 1968 to 1986 editions the Almanac bore the imprints of local newspapers (in New York,the Daily News for most of the time) in various markets while published by NEA. Thereafter it was branded with "World Almanac Books", initially as an imprint of Pharos Books, another Scripps-owned entity, until the sales noted below.
Over the decades The World Almanac has been featured in several Hollywood films. Fred MacMurray talks about it with Edward G. Robinson in Double Indemnity ; Bette Davis screams about it in All About Eve ; Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper flirt about it in Love in the Afternoon ; it is featured in Miracle on 34th Street when a trial is held to see if Santa Claus really exists; Rosie Perez continually reads it in the film White Men Can't Jump ; and Will Smith checks it for the exact time of sunset so he can set his digital watch in I Am Legend .
The World Almanac For Kids was published annually since 1995 until 2014.
In 1993 Scripps sold The World Almanac to K-III (later Primedia). The World Almanac was sold to Ripplewood Holdings' WRC Media in 1999. Ripplewood bought Reader's Digest and the book was then produced by the World Almanac Education Group, which was owned by The Reader's Digest Association.
The World Almanac was sold to Infobase in 2009. In 2018, The World Almanac published its 150-year anniversary edition. [7] The World Almanac,together with the "World Almanac Books" imprint used since the closing years of Scripps ownership, was sold to Skyhorse Publishing in 2020.
As with other Skyhorse imprints it is distributed by Simon & Schuster. [8]
In the mid-1980s, The World Almanac was being put together by a 10-member staff. At that time, 20 percent of the book was rarely updated (for example, the text of the Constitution of the United States), 50 percent was updated at least briefly each year, and 30 percent of the content was completely new each year. [5]
Lists published in The World Almanac include:
The New York World-Telegram, later known as the New York World-Telegram and The Sun, was a New York City newspaper from 1931 to 1966.
The New York Herald was a large-distribution newspaper based in New York City that existed between 1835 and 1924. At that point it was acquired by its smaller rival the New-York Tribune to form the New York Herald Tribune.
Funk & Wagnalls was an American publisher known for its reference works, including A Standard Dictionary of the English Language, and the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia.
Reader's Digest is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in Midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wife Lila Bell Wallace. For many years, Reader's Digest was the best-selling consumer magazine in the United States; it lost the distinction in 2009 to Better Homes and Gardens. According to Media Mark Research (2006), Reader's Digest reached more readers with household incomes of over $100,000 than Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Inc. combined.
Regnery Publishing is a politically conservative book publisher based in Washington, D.C. The company was founded by Henry Regnery in 1947,. In December 2023, Regnery was acquired from Salem Media Group by Skyhorse Publishing, with Skyhorse president Tony Lyons becoming Regnery's publisher.
The New York World was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 to 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers as a leading national voice of the Democratic Party. From 1883 to 1911 under publisher Joseph Pulitzer, it was a pioneer in yellow journalism, capturing readers' attention with sensation, sports, sex and scandal and pushing its daily circulation to the one-million mark. It was sold in 1931 and merged into the New York World-Telegram.
The bibliographical definition of an edition is all copies of a book printed from substantially the same setting of type, including all minor typographical variants.
The Cincinnati Post was an afternoon daily newspaper published in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. In Northern Kentucky, it was bundled inside a local edition called The Kentucky Post.
Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books.
E. P. Dutton was an American book publishing company. It was founded as a book retailer in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1852 by Edward Payson Dutton. Since 1986, it has been an imprint of Penguin Group.
The University of Nebraska Press (UNP) was founded in 1941 and is an academic publisher of scholarly and general-interest books. The press is under the auspices of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the main campus of the University of Nebraska system. UNP publishes primarily non-fiction books and academic journals, in both print and electronic editions. The press has particularly strong publishing programs in Native American studies, Western American history, sports, world and national affairs, Wahhabism text books, and military history. The press has also been active in reprinting classic books from various genres, including science fiction and fantasy.
The New York Evening Telegram was a New York City daily newspaper. It was established in 1867. The newspaper was published by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., and it was said to be considered to be an evening edition of the New York Herald.
Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. is an American independent book publishing company founded in 2006 and headquartered in New York City, with a satellite office in Brattleboro, Vermont.
Carmen Sandiego is a media franchise based on a series of computer video games created by the American software company Broderbund. While the original 1985 Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? video game was classified as a "mystery exploration" series by creators and the media, the series would later be deemed edutainment when the games became unexpectedly popular in classrooms. The franchise centers around the fictional thieving villain of the same name, who is the ringleader of the criminal organization V.I.L.E.; the protagonists are agents of the ACME Detective Agency who try to thwart the crooks' plans to steal treasures from around the world, while the later ultimate goal is to capture Carmen Sandiego herself.
Beginning in 1966 the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) annually awarded the George Halas Trophy to the most outstanding defensive player in the National Football League (NFL). The winner was released via the NEA news service and also appeared in the World Almanac, which was an NEA publication. The award ran through 1998. It was considered one of the major awards and was included in the NFL Record and Fact Book and its winners appeared in the encyclopedia, Total Football II.
The New York Times Almanac (NYTA) was an almanac published in the United States.
Perseus Books Group was an American publishing company founded in 1996 by investor Frank Pearl. Perseus acquired the trade publishing division of Addison-Wesley in 1997.
Infobase is an American publisher of databases, reference book titles and textbooks geared towards the North American library, secondary school, and university-level curriculum markets. Infobase operates a number of prominent imprints, including Facts On File, Films for the Humanities & Sciences, Cambridge Educational, Ferguson Publishing, Vault Law, and Chelsea House.
Harry Hansen was an American journalist, editor, literary critic and historian. He is notable as one of the many authors who wrote for the Random House Landmark Series of children's history during the 1950s and 1960s and he also edited the World Book from 1950 to 1965.
Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? is an educational video game released by Broderbund on April 23, 1985. It is the first product in the Carmen Sandiego franchise. The game was distributed with The World Almanac and Book of Facts, published by Pharos Books. An enhanced version of the game was released in 1989, which did not have the almanac-based copy protection and instead used disk-based copy protection. A deluxe version was released in 1990, and featured additional animation and a reworked interface from the original version. Some of the bonus features included digitized photos from National Geographic, over 3200 clues, music from the Smithsonian/Folkways Recordings, 20 villains, 60 countries, and 16 maps. CD-ROM versions for DOS and Macintosh were released in 1992, and a Windows version was released in 1994.