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.
About Us
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, Associate Publisher
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.
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.
Kyle Gipson
Associate Editor
Phone: 212-364-0633
Email: kyle.gipson@hbgusa.com
Twitter: @kylegpsn
Kyle Gipson joined Basic Books in 2021 and primarily acquires in history, biography, and the social sciences, with a particular interest in African American history, gender and sexuality, and social justice. Kyle worked previously at Johns Hopkins University Press, The MIT Press, and Beacon Press. He holds a M.A. in English from Harvard University, where his studies focused on African American literature.
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.
Explore Some of the Best of Basic
The Half Has Never Been Told
Winner of the 2015 Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American HistoriansWinner of the 2015 Sidney Hillman PrizeA groundbreaking history demonstrating that America's…
The Happiness Hypothesis
"The most brilliant and lucid analysis of virtue and well-being in the entire literature of positive psychology. For the reader who seeks to understand happiness,…
The Jazz of Physics
A spectacular musical and scientific journey from the Bronx to the cosmic horizon that reveals the astonishing links between jazz, science, Einstein, and ColtraneMore than…
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
The classic, New York Times-bestselling book on the psychology of racism that shows us how to talk about race in America. Walk into any racially…
Bloodlands
From the author of the international bestseller On Tyranny, the definitive history of Hitler’s and Stalin’s politics of mass killing, explaining why Ukraine has been at the center…
Consider the Fork
Award-winning food writer Bee Wilson's secret history of kitchens, showing how new technologies - from the fork to the microwave and beyond - have fundamentally…
The German War
A groundbreaking history of what drove the Germans to fight -- and keep fighting -- for a lost cause in World War IIIn The German…
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog
In this classic work of developmental psychology, renowned psychiatrist and the co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller What Happened to You? reveals how trauma affects children—and outlines…
The Fall of the Ottomans
The thrilling and definitive history of World War I in the Middle East By 1914 the powers of Europe were sliding inexorably toward war, and…
Rise of the Robots
The New York Times-bestselling guide to how automation is changing the economy, undermining work, and reshaping our lives Winner of Best Business Book of the…
Coyote America
The New York Times best-selling account of how coyotes--long the target of an extermination policy--spread to every corner of the United States Finalist for thePEN/E.O. Wilson…
The Book of Why
A Turing Award-winning computer scientist and statistician shows how understanding causality has revolutionized science and will revolutionize artificial intelligence "Correlation is not causation." This mantra,…
How to Be a Stoic
A philosopher asks how ancient Stoicism can help us flourish today Whenever we worry about what to eat, how to love, or simply how to be…
Love and Math
An awesome, globe-spanning, and New York Times bestselling journey through the beauty and power of mathematics What if you had to take an art class…
The Rise of the Creative Class
World-renowned urbanist Richard Florida's bestselling classic on the transformation of our cities in the twenty-first century -- now updated with a new prefaceIn his modern…
Quantum Mechanics
First he taught you classical mechanics. Now, physicist Leonard Susskind has teamed up with data engineer Art Friedman to present the theory and associated mathematics…
Endurance
Experience one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age in this New York Times bestseller: the harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914…
The Republic of Plato
The definitive translation of Plato's Republic, the most influential text in the history of Western philosophy Long regarded as the most accurate rendering of Plato's…
Love's Executioner
In his classic, bestselling work, the masterful therapist and novelist Irvin Yalom describes his sometimes tragic, sometimes inspiring, and always absorbing encounters with patients In…
The Rape of Nanking
The New York Times bestselling account of one of history's most brutal -- and forgotten -- massacres, when the Japanese army destroyed China's capital city…
How to Listen to Jazz
A "radiantly accomplished" music scholar presents an accessible introduction to the art of listening to jazz (Wall Street Journal)In How to Listen to Jazz, award-winning…
Buzz
As seen on PBS's American Spring LIVE, the award-winning author of The Triumph of Seeds and Feathers presents a natural and cultural history of bees:…
The Second World Wars
A "breathtakingly magisterial" account of World War II by America's preeminent military historian (Wall Street Journal)World War II was the most lethal conflict in human…
Godel, Escher, Bach
Winner of the Pulitzer PrizeA metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis CarrollDouglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature…
The Social Transformation of American Medicine
Winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize in American History, this is a landmark history of how the entire American health care…
The Little Ice Age
Only in the last decade have climatologists developed an accurate picture of yearly climate conditions in historical times. This development confirmed a long-standing suspicion: that…
The Cold War
The definitive history of the Cold War and its impact around the world We tend to think of the Cold War as a bounded conflict:…
The German War
A groundbreaking history of what drove the Germans to fight -- and keep fighting -- for a lost cause in World War IIIn The German…