Jan's Small Publisher Books

I'll try to remember to post books I've read and plan to read this year which are published by small publishers. Here's a start:

Travel as a Political Act by Rick Steves - published by Nation Books
The Histories (Oxford World's Classics) by Herodotus - published by Oxford University Press see posts 4 & 5 below, though I still think university presses should count, no matter how large because they publish books that might not otherwise be published
Guide to Machine Quilting by Diane Gaudynski - published by the American Quilter's Society

Everything else I've read so far this year has been published by a large publisher or subsidiary, or has been an audio book or a book on my Kindle.

What did you think about the Rick Steves book? I'm going on a tour with his company this summer and have been wondering about it (the book not the tour).

Here's the blurb I wrote about it after I finished it:
"This was for one of my book clubs, and I wasn't expecting to like it, but it was a surprisingly good book by the guy who does those cheesy travel shows on PBS. I agreed with most of his ideas that travel should be for more than just to spend money at Disney World. It should enrich your life and be a learning experience about others peoples' ideas, values and beliefs. The only chapter I didn't enjoy was the one on El Salvador. The ones I enjoyed the most were on Morocco, Turkey, and Iran. I also liked the final chapter where Steves talks about what one can do with the knowledge of the world one gains through travel."

I gave the book 3.5 stars, which means I thought it was above average. He writes a lot better than I expected. I think it might help you to understand his company's travel philosophy if you read it. Hope this is helpful.

The OUP should not be listed as a small publisher - it is the largest academic publishing company in the world, from the University of Oxford, and most classics you can think of have been widely distributed by them.

http://www.oup.com/us/

> 1, 4

Indeed. As it says on the website you linked to, soniaandree,

"Today, the OUP group of publishing companies constitutes the world's largest university press, being larger than all the American university presses and Cambridge University Press combined. Worldwide, the OUP group publishes more than 6,000 new titles a year and employs approximately 5,000 people across 50 countries."

# 4 & 5: Oh, well. But if they didn't publish so many classics, would they be as easily obtainable? I love my version of Herodotus from them; my other version, The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories is published by Pantheon, which is a division of Knopf/Doubleday, and it is a work of art, but not as readable as the Oxford translation by Robin Waterfield.

I’m starting over with this list, since I thought it was a great idea back in 2010, but then I never followed through. I’ve read nine books so far this year, and none are from small publishers.

So far this year, I've finished 15 books, one of which is by a very small publisher: Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia by Jean Sasson. As far as I can tell the only books they have published are this book and its two sequels. The publisher is Windsor-Brooke Books, LLC.

I completed Men in War by Andreas Latzko, which is the first six chapters of Latzko's book about the Great War, published as a paper book by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform in 2014. The six chapters were written in 1916 by an officer in the Imperial and Royal Wehrmacht of Austria-Hungary, and deals with the Great War at the River Isonzo front. The small book was published anonymously in 1917 by Rascher-Verlag, a Swiss publisher of pacifist literature based in Zurich. The complete book was published by Rascher-Verlag in 1918 as Menschen im Krieg.