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The MIT Press is the only university press in the United States whose list is based in science and technology. This does not mean that science and engineering are all we publish, but it does mean that we are committed to the edges and frontiers of the world – to exploring new fields and new modes of inquiry. (For a time we described our publishing program as chasing “The Moving Frontier,” but we’ve moved beyond even that.) We publish about 200 new books a year and over 40 journals. We are a major publishing presence in fields as diverse as architecture, social theory, economics, cognitive science, and computational science, and we have a long-term commitment to both design excellence and the efficient and creative use of new technologies. Our goal is to create books and journals that are challenging, creative, attractive, and yet affordable to individual readers.
Our history starts in 1926 when the physicist Max Born visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to deliver a set of lectures on Problems of Atomic Dynamics. The Institute published the lectures under its own imprint, and that book is numbered 1 in the archives of The MIT Press. In 1932, James R. Killian Jr.– editor of the Institute’s alumni magazine and future scientific adviser to President Kennedy and tenth president of M.I.T.– engineered the creation of an Institute-sponsored imprint called Technology Press, which published eight titles over the next five years. In 1937, John Wiley & Sons took on editorial and marketing functions for the young imprint, which during the next 25 years published 125 titles. In 1962, M.I.T. amicably severed the Wiley connection and upgraded its imprint to an independent publishing house, naming it The MIT Press. One of the independent Press’s first new employees was graphic innovator Muriel Cooper, who designed our distinctive logo and set the course for the design innovations that have been a hallmark of the Press’s work to the present day. A Journals division was added in 1968, and a European marketing office was opened in 1969. (Today we sell a higher proportion of our products outside the United States than any other U.S. university press.)
The creative burst and explosive growth of the 1960s slackened with the library cutbacks of the early 1970s, and by the end of that decade the Press knew that it had to rethink what it was doing. We developed a strategy of focusing the list on a few key areas and publishing in depth in those areas. The initial core consisted of architecture, computer science and artificial intelligence, economics, and the emerging interdiscipline of cognitive science. The plan worked wonderfully, and by the mid-1980s the Press was again thriving. As the list developed, occasional offshoots sprouted (neuroscience, for example, was spun off from cognitive science in 1987), while a few smaller areas in which we continued to publish – technology studies, aesthetic theory, design, and social theory – have remained viable and interesting components of what has become a unique mix. Our latest addition was an environmental science list, started in the early 1990s.
Today the Press continues to thrive. In fact, our archive received book 6000 in June 2000.
The Press’s enthusiasm for innovation is reflected in our continuing exploration of the electronic frontier. Since the late 1960s, we have experimented with generation after generation of electronic publishing tools. From those messy paper-tape systems through IBM Composers to our present-day use of direct-to-press production technologies, our intensive use of the Internet, and our commitment to new electronic products – whether digital journals or entirely new forms of communication – we have continued to look for the most efficient and effective means to serve our readership. These readers have come to expect excellence from our products, and they can count on us to maintain a commitment to producing rigorous and innovative information products in whatever forms the future of publishing may bring.
Books
Title: The Rise of China
Author: Michael E. Brown
Date: April 2005Title: Filling the Ranks: Transforming the U.S. Military System
Author: Cindy Williams
Date: November 2004Title: The Future of Turkish Foreign Policy
Authors: Lenore G. Martin and Dimitris Keridis
Date: November 2004Title: First to Arrive: State and Local Responses to Terrorism
Authors: Juliette N. Kayyem and Robyn L. Pangi
Date: November 2004Title: Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population
Authors: Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. Den Boer
Date: November 2004Title: Countering Terrorism: Dimensions of Preparedness
Authors: Arnold M. Howitt and Robyn L. Pangi
Date: November 2004Title: Terrorism, Freedom, and Security: Winning Without War
Author: Philip B. Heymann
Date: November 2004Title: Progress in International Relations Theory: Appraising the Field
Authors: Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman
Date: November 2004Title: Fighting Words: Language Policy and National Development in India
Authors: Michael E. Brown and Sumit Ganguly
Date: November 2004Title: What Are Track-II Talks?
Authors: Hussein Agha, Shai Feldman, Ahmad Khalidi and Zeev Schiff
Date: November 2004Title: The Russian Military: Power and Policy
Author: Steven E. Miller and Dmitri Trenin
Date: September 2004Title: Reshaping Rogue States: Preemption, Regime Change, and US Policy toward Iran, Iraq, and North Korea
Author: Alexander T. J. Lennon and Camille Eiss
Date: August 2004Title: Swords and Sustenance: The Economics of Security in Belarus and Ukraine
Author: Robert Legvold and Celeste A. Wallander
Date: March 2004Title: The Logic of Political Survival
Author: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson and James D. Morrow
Date: October 2003Title: The Battle for Hearts and Minds: Using Soft Power to Undermine Terrorist Networks
Author: Alexander T. J. Lennon
Date: September 2003Title: Countering Terrorism: Dimensions of Preparedness
Author: Arnold M. Howitt and Robyn L. Pangi
Date: September 2003Title: Comrades No More: The Seeds of Change in Eastern Europe
Author: Renée de Nevers
Date: July 2003Title: Thinking Strategically: The Major Powers, Kazakhstan, and the Central Asian Nexus
Author: Robert Legvold
Date: March 2003Title: War and Reconciliation: Reason and Emotion in Conflict Resolution
Author: William J. Long and Peter Brecke
Date: February 2003Title: Contemporary Nuclear Debates: Missile Defenses, Arms Control, and Arms Races in the Twenty-First Century
Author: Alexander T. J. Lennon
Date: November 2002Title: What Does the World Want from America?: International Perspectives on US Foreign Policy
Author: Alexander T. J. Lennon
Date: November 2002Title: Borders and Brethren: Iran and the Challenge of Azerbaijani Identity
Author: Brenda Shaffer
Date: July 2002Title: The Health of Nations: Infectious Disease, Environmental Change, and Their Effects on National Security and Development
Author: Andrew T. Price-Smith
Date: November 2001Title: Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces
Author: Pavel Podvig
Date: November 2001Title: Keeping the Edge: Managing Defense for the Future
Author: Ashton B. Carter and John P. White
Date: May 2001Title: Legalization and World Politics
Author: Judith L. Goldstein, Miles Kahler, Robert O. Keohane and Anne-Marie Slaughter
Date: May 2001Title: Environmental Regime Effectiveness: Confronting Theory with Evidence
Author: Edward L. Miles
Date: January 2001Title: Terrorism and America: A Commonsense Strategy for a Democratic Society
Author: Philip B. Heymann
Date: August 2000Title: The Coming Crisis: Nuclear Proliferation, U.S. Interests, and World Order
Author: Victor A. Utgoff, Editor
Date: July 2000Title: Rational Choice and Security Studies: Stephen Walt and His Critics
Author: Michael E. Brown, Owen R. Cot é Jr, Sean M. Lynn-Jones and Steven E. Miller
Date: July 2000Title: America's Strategic Choices
Author: Michael E. Brown
Date: July 2000