Encounter Books Names Kimball, Of New Criterion, Its New Publisher

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Encounter Books has named the New Criterion’s co-editor and co-publisher, Roger Kimball, as its new publisher. He will succeed Peter Collier, who recently retired after leading the San Francisco publishing entity since it began in 1998.


Encounter will relocate to the same Broadway building as the New Criterion. Some of the San Francisco staff will move to Manhattan, and Mr. Kimball also intends to make new hires. Mr. Collier said Encounter has always been something of a political anomaly in San Francisco.


He described Mr. Kimball as “the perfect person to bring this vision to fruition. Roger is the idea man par excellence, a provocative controversialist who is at heart a real intellectual with a passion for thought. He knows how to work with authors and with ideas.”


Mr. Kimball said he is not pulling back from his involvement at the New Criterion, although some daily responsibilities will be handed off and he will hire a full-time staffer who will assume a senior position at the magazine.


Encounter Books began out of concern that Michael Joyce, the former head of the Bradley Foundation, had about the direction of American publishing. Mr. Joyce, Mr. Collier said, was interested in publishing serious nonfiction about culture, politics, and social policy, and selling the books “as ideas rather than as widgets.”


Encounter Books is a nonprofit entity, and Mr. Kimball said its acquisition budget has not been set.


Founded in 1997 with a grant from the Wisconsin-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Encounter Books has published more than 100 titles, such as Thomas Sowell’s “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” and Victor Davis Hanson’s “Mexifornia: A State of Becoming,” as well as books by Michael Novak, Jean-Francois Revel, Leon Kass, William Kristol, and other writers and scholars.


Encounter’s move to New York comes at a time when some of the major publishing houses have begun their own conservative imprints. A difference, Mr. Collier said, is that Encounter was born “out of the genuine conviction of the importance of conservative and neoconservative ideas.”


Mr. Kimball said, “We’re in it for the long haul,” adding that the interest of mainstream publishing houses in printing conservative books may be “reed-like in a hurricane,” changing direction when conservatism becomes no longer popular or profitable. Such endeavors could be likened to “publishing by braille,” Mr. Collier said.


Will Weisser, associate publisher at Sentinel, a conservative imprint at Penguin (USA), countered by saying his company has a senior editor, Bernadette Malone, who is “as committed ideologically and politically passionate as anyone who works for Regnery Publishing or Encounter Books. In fact, she came from Regnery.”


Regnery Publishing Incorporated began in 1947 as the Henry Regnery Company, nurturing postwar American conservative intellectual thought by publishing influential books such as Russell Kirk’s “The Conservative Mind” and William F. Buckley Jr.’s “God and Man at Yale.” It is now part of Eagle Publishing, and its more recent authors include Dinesh D’Souza, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Rich Lowry, and Oliver North.


Jed Donahue, a senior editor at Crown Forum, launched a conservative imprint by Random House in June 2003, likewise worked as an editor at Regnery Publishing – for six years – and before that worked three years for syndicated columnist George F. Will. “My commitment to conservative ideas and authors should be clear from my background,” he said. “We feel strongly that it is wrong to publish only to the tastes of culturally sheltered Manhattan. Crown Forum Publisher Steve Ross said soon after announcing the imprint that publishing for conservative Americans is not just a market opportunity but also a civic responsibility.”


Mr. Kimball said he looked forward “to building on the superb foundation laid by Peter Collier. Encounter is poised to consolidate and extend its role as a leader in the world of serious nonfiction and cultural controversy.” He said it would continue to publish serious, readable books.


About the current interest in conservative books, the editor in chief of the American Spectator, Emmett Tyrrell Jr., who is also a columnist for The New York Sun, said, “It’s quite obvious that the great tidal wave of conservative publishers continues to sweep the nation.”


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