About Us

Since its founding in 1950, Basic Books has shaped public debate by publishing award-winning books in history, science, sociology, psychology, politics, and current affairs. Basic's list of influential authors includes Stephon Alexander, Isaac Asimov, Edward Baptist, H.W. Brands, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Iris Chang, George Church, Niall Ferguson, Richard Feynman, Richard Florida, Martin Ford, Howard Gardner, Victor Davis Hanson, Jonathan Haidt, Judith Herman, Christopher Hitchens, Douglas Hofstadter, Leszek Kolakowski, Kevin Kruse, Lawrence Lessig, Claude Levi-Strauss, Alice Miller, Robert Nozick, Steven Pinker, Samantha Power, Diane Ravitch, Eugene Rogan, Thomas Sowell, Beverly Daniel Tatum, Eric Topol, Sherry Turkle, Timothy Snyder, Nicholas Stargardt, Michael Walzer, George Weigel, Bee Wilson, James Q. Wilson, Richard Wrangham, Irvin Yalom, and Shing-Tung Yau. Basic Books is an imprint of Perseus Books, a Hachette Book Group company.

Meet The Editors

Lara Heimert

SVP, Publisher

Phone: 212-364-0669

Email: lara.heimert@hbgusa.com

Twitter: @laraheimert

Lara Heimert joined Basic Books in 2005. Previously, she was publisher of the trade division at Yale University Press. She has published numerous prize-winning and New York Times bestselling titles. Highlights include Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told, Eugene Rogan’s The Fall of the Ottomans, John Bradshaw’s Dog Sense and Cat Sense, Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands, Nicholas Stargardt’s The German War, Bee Wilson’s Consider the Fork, and Victor Davis Hanson’s The Second World Wars. A graduate of Princeton University, Lara acquires primarily in the field of history, broadly conceived—from world wars to marginalia, from culinary history to political theory, from diaspora to doodles.

Thomas Kelleher

VP & Editorial Director

Phone: 212-364-0657

Email: thomas.kelleher@hbgusa.com

Twitter: @tj_kelleher

Thomas Kelleher joined Basic Books in 2009, and publishes predominantly in science, mathematics, and economics. He has published Eric Topol, Sherry Turkle, Edward Frenkel, Eugenia Cheng, and Leonard Susskind, among many others. Recent highlights include Azra Raza’s The First Cell, Mark Moffett’s The Human Swarm, Stephon Alexander’s The Jazz of Physics, Adam Becker’s What Is Real?, Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie’s The Book of Why, and Sabine Hossenfelder’s Lost in Math. He is also responsible for the publishing program surrounding The Feynman Lectures on Physics.

Brian J. Distelberg

VP, Editor in Chief

Phone: 212-364-0655

Email: brian.distelberg@hbgusa.com

Brian J. Distelberg joined Basic Books in 2015 and acquires primarily in history. Books he has edited and published include Edward Watts’s Mortal Republic, Martha Jones’s Vanguard, Martyn Rady’s The Habsburgs, Peniel Joseph’s The Sword and the Shield, Walter Johnson’s The Broken Heart of America, and Erika Lee’s America for Americans. He also publishes selectively in politics and law; highlights include Jonathan Metzl’s Dying of Whiteness and Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz’s To End a Presidency. Brian worked previously at Harvard University Press and holds a PhD in US history from Yale University.

Emily Taber

Executive Editor

Phone: (212) 364-0656

Email: emily.taber@hbgusa.com

Emily Taber joined Basic Books in 2022 and acquires primarily in economics and business. Before joining Basic, she was the economics, finance, and business editor at the MIT Press, where she published books by Ron Adner, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Cass Sunstein, and Ruchika Tulshyan.

Emma Berry

Senior Editor

Phone: 212-364-0542

Email: emma.berry@hbgusa.com

Emma Berry joined Basic Books in 2020 and acquires in economics, history, law, and the social sciences, with a particular interest in feminism and queer studies. Before joining Basic, she was an editor at Crown, where she acquired and edited books by Katherine Sharp Landdeck, Holly Jackson, Dorothy Brown, and Maurice Chammah.

Marissa Koors

Associate Editor

Phone: 212-364-0658

Email: marissa.koors@hbgusa.com

Twitter: @marissakoors

Marissa Koors joined Basic Books in 2021, and acquires primarily in philosophy, literary studies, classics, and the social sciences, with particular interest in fashion history and internet culture. Before joining Basic, she was the philosophy editor at Wiley Blackwell, an imprint of John Wiley and Sons, where she acquired and published books by Peter Singer, Peter Hacker, Ernest Sosa, Susan Schneider, Alister McGrath, Antony Kenny, and Timothy Williamson.

Michael Kaler

Associate Editor

Phone: 212-364-0636

Email: michael.kaler@hbgusa.com

Michael Kaler joined Basic Books in 2020, and acquires primarily in history and politics, with particular interests in social justice, climate change, and labor issues. He also acquires selectively in international affairs and global studies. Before joining Basic, Michael worked at Liveright and New York Magazine.