Parent company | Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc. |
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Founded | 1997 |
Founder | Peter Collier |
Successor | Roger Kimball |
Country of origin | United States |
Headquarters location | New York City |
Distribution | Two Rivers Distribution |
Official website | encounterbooks.com |
Encounter Books is a book publisher in the United States known for publishing conservative authors. It was named for Encounter , the now defunct literary magazine founded by Irving Kristol and Stephen Spender. Based in New York City since 2006, Encounter Books publishes non-fiction books in the areas of politics, history, religion, biography, education, public policy, current affairs and social sciences.
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The publisher was named for Encounter , the now defunct literary magazine founded by Irving Kristol and Stephen Spender. [1] Encounter Books was founded in 1998 in San Francisco by the Bradley Foundation, with Peter Collier as editor. [1] [2] Collier retired in late 2005. Encounter Books was taken over by the commentator Roger Kimball, who is also co-editor and publisher of The New Criterion magazine. In early 2006, Kimball relocated Encounter Books to New York City.
Encounter was the publisher of When Harry Became Sally which was banned from Amazon in February 2021. [3] In response, publisher Roger Kimball said in a statement, "Amazon is using its massive power to distort the marketplace of ideas and is deceiving its own customers in the process." [4]
In October 2009, Encounter launched a series of short polemical booklets in what it said was the spirit of The Federalist Papers and Thomas Paine's Common Sense. These are called Encounter Broadsides. The series publishes well-known commentators on topical political issues, from health care and immigration to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Published Broadside authors include John R. Bolton, Victor Davis Hanson, John Fund, Michael Ledeen, Andrew C. McCarthy, Betsy McCaughey, Stephen Moore, and Michael B. Mukasey. Publisher Roger Kimball said of the series:
[T]he imprint will serve as "a new—or rather, a revival of an old—genre that is supple enough to respond quickly to unfolding events and yet authoritative enough to have an important effect on the debate over policy." [5]
Publishers Weekly reported that the Broadside series would be "crashed", meaning produced and marketed on an aggressive turnaround schedule. [5]
In June 2009, Encounter announced that it was no longer sending its books to The New York Times Book Review . At the time, publisher Roger Kimball complained that The New York Times was politicized and superficial in its cultural coverage. He said his books could not expect positive reviews from the Times and said they could gain "impetus" from "the pluralistic universe of talk radio and the 'blogosphere'." He said Encounter could have its books make the Times's bestseller list without having the newspaper review them. [6]
William Kristol is an American neoconservative writer. A frequent commentator on several networks including CNN, he was the founder and editor-at-large of the political magazine The Weekly Standard. Kristol is now editor-at-large of the center-right publication The Bulwark and has been the host of Conversations with Bill Kristol, an interview web program, since 2014.
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Irving William Kristol was an American journalist and writer. As a founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectual and political culture of the latter half of the twentieth century. He was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism". After his death, he was described by The Daily Telegraph as being "perhaps the most consequential public intellectual of the latter half of the century". He is the father of political writer Bill Kristol.
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Encounter was a literary magazine founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and journalist Irving Kristol. The magazine ceased publication in 1991. Published in the United Kingdom, it was an Anglo-American intellectual and cultural journal, originally associated with the anti-Stalinist left. The magazine received covert funding from the Central Intelligence Agency who, along with MI6, discussed the founding of an "Anglo-American left-of-centre publication" intended to counter the idea of Cold War neutralism. The magazine was rarely critical of American foreign policy and generally shaped its content to support the geopolitical interests of the United States government.
Melvin Jonah Lasky was an American journalist, intellectual, and member of the anti-Communist left. He founded the German journal Der Monat in 1948 and, from 1958 to 1991, edited Encounter, one of many journals revealed to have been secretly funded by the CIA through the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF).
Peter Anthony Dale Collier was an American writer and publisher. He was the founding publisher of conservative Encounter Books in California and held that position from 1998 until he resigned in 2005. The company moved from San Francisco to New York City, and Collier was replaced as publisher by Roger Kimball.
Sir Stephen Harold Spender was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1965.
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