Atlas Books is now Atlas & Co.

This spring is a momentous season for Atlas & Co.—formerly Atlas Books. We’ve changed our name; we’ve moved to new offices in the Flatiron District; and we’re launching our first list as an independent publisher. Over the last few years we’ve come to be known in the trade as a publisher of brief biographies and books on the great discoveries in science by distinguished writers; beginning in April, we’ll be bringing out eight books a season, spring and fall, expanding our mandate to include memoir and history, politics and theology—whatever in the realm of nonfiction meets our exacting editorial standards.

Atlas & Co. is more than a publishing house; it’s a culture, with its own character and look. And our website is designed to make it accessible. Among its features: downloadable content in the form of sample chapters and MP3 files of exclusive author interviews; a calendar of events for Atlas & Co. books; and a database of all past co-publishing projects and new independent projects. We'll be writing periodically about new developments in publishing, in the literary world, and here at Atlas & Co. Just to give you a sample of what to expect in the coming months: Eric Etheridge’s Breach of Peace, a moving portrait of the Mississippi Freedom Riders who boarded segregated buses in Jackson, Mississippi in 1961 and forever changed the civil rights movement in America, will be excerpted in the May issue of O magazine; events celebrating the book will be held at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C., Symphony Space in New York, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, in addition to a 14-city national tour. Details about our books—reviews, news coverage, author appearances—will be frequently updated on the website.   

It’s an exciting time to be in publishing. Every day seems to bring news about the demise of reading in our culture: the widely publicized report from the National Endowment for the Arts; the closing of independent bookstores; the folding of book review sections in newspaper around the country. None of this troubles my sleep: the book is a marvelous technological invention, a beautiful object, and above all a source of human knowledge and enlightenment which has no substitute. It’s an assumption that we intend to prove in the years to come by publishing high-quality nonfiction in elegant formats—books that bear the imprint of our unique and distinctive sensibility.