Happy birthday to Palgrave Macmillan! The 10-year-old division was created when Macmillan Press in the U.K. merged with St. Martin's Scholarly & Reference division to form Palgrave. Two years later, when parent company Holtzbrinck Group was able to use the Macmillan name worldwide, the division was renamed Palgrave Macmillan.
From its founding in 2000, Palgrave Macmillan in the U.S. has published a mix of scholarly and trade titles. (Palgrave's roots are in the Palgrave family, who in 19th-century London were scholars and politicians and wrote and edited titles for Macmillan Publishers.) In the U.S., Palgrave Macmillan distributes the British Film Institute's titles, I.B.Tauris, Zed Books, Pluto Press and Manchester University Press. Palgrave Macmillan also includes a popular science list, Macmillan Science, that collaborates with Nature and Scientific American, two Macmillan Ltd. companies.
A jewel in the crown of Palgrave Macmillan in the U.S. is the trade program, which covers a range of territory. Many of its trade titles address difficult national and international issues and examine controversial historical figures of our time. For example, recent and forthcoming titles include biographies of the late Shah of Iran, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and Bolivian president Evo Morales; books about the politics and conflicts in the Middle East; a look at what the arrest of historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on his porch says about race and class in America today; examinations of stereotypes involving Jews and money and the Jewish lobby in the U.S.; a critical examination of oil companies and energy policy by the former head of Shell Oil. At the same time, the house, which has headquarters in the historic Flatiron Building in New York City, will soon publish a tasty title about the Italian-American food culture and another book, co-written by Hustler founder Larry Flynt, about how the sex lives of U.S. presidents have affected history. Earlier this year, Palgrave Macmillan put out a title on the "curious" economics of the contemporary art market and The Adventurer's Handbook, about surviving unimaginable challenges in the wild.
The common threads for all these books: they are engaging, provocative, timely, often written by insiders and have high standards of scholarship. "It's all quality material and that's the key," said Palgrave Macmillan publisher and senior v-p Airié Stuart.
The trade program got into high gear when Stuart joined the division more than six years ago as editorial director. She began her publishing career working for editor Rick Horgan--first at HarperCollins, then at Warner--whose forte was celebrity titles. Then she went to Simon & Schuster, and during that time earned an MBA and became interested in business books. Her change of focus led her to John Wiley & Sons and finally to Palgrave Macmillan.
Stuart joined Palgrave Macmillan with the goal of developing "a vision for the trade program and expanding academic," she said. The scholarly part of the division had long been strong in politics, history, business, economics and literature. "So it was clear to me that we could build a fantastic, serious nonfiction trade program," she continued. "Trade and academic should work in tandem. They have a unifying strategy. The cross market capability of books is key to our identity." Through the invigorated trade program, Palgrave Macmillan has been "introducing" some of its academic authors into the broader marketplace.
Palgrave Macmillan authors aren't shy. "A lot of our books create debate and conversation in the intellectual and academic community" and are by authors "on the right and on the left," Stuart said. "As long as the work is of quality and there's rigor to it. Those are our main criteria."
One Emphasis: the Middle East
The Middle East is a prime example of Palgrave Macmillan's range of scope and its eagerness to tackle controversial subjects. Its authors who write about the region and related subjects include such political polar opposites as Abraham Foxman, a stout defender of Israel (more about his new book, Jews & Money, below), and Juan Cole, who advocates engaging with the Muslim world. While many of the stable of authors whose work touch on the region deeply disagree on many issues, they respect each other, Stuart said. If logistics were better, she continued, "Our fantasy is to have a group of our authors on a Middle East panel together."
Recent works by that dream panel include:
Arab Voices: What They Are Saying to Us, and Why It Matters by James Zogby, published last month. The founder and president of the Arab American Institute and a senior advisor to Zogby International, the polling firm founded by his brother, John, Zogby here presents data about attitudes in the Arab world culled from a comprehensive, new Zogby International poll. He aims to "bring into stark relief the myths, assumptions, and biases that hold us back from understanding this important people."
Engaging the Muslim World by Juan Cole, a professor at the University of Michigan, Middle East expert and popular blogger, was published last year and is now out in trade paperback. Cole emphasizes taking "the true Muslim perspective into account when looking at East-West relations" and makes a variety of recommendations about how the U.S. can move forward "on fundamental issues like religion, oil, war and peace."
Obama and the Middle East by Fawaz Gerges, which the division will publish next year. A professor at the London School of Economics, Gerges appears regularly on CNN, CBS, ABC, NPR, the BBC and Al Jazeera.
The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise from its Ashes by Avraham Burg, published last December. A leader in the Israeli Labor Party and One Israel Party, Burg argues that Israel needs to move on from the understandable trauma caused by the Holocaust in order to live in peace with its neighbors and the world at large.
Very Current Affairs
Palgrave Macmillan's current affairs titles aim to be on the cutting edge of the news. As Airié Stuart put it: "We choose our current affairs titles really carefully. We try to predict the future and be the first out with a book on an important subject."
One example of this ability to anticipate events was the first major English-language biography of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S. by Nikolas Kozloff, which Palgrave Macmillan published in 2006, just as Chavez became a focal point for Bush administration ire and was featured in news reports in the U.S.
This past July the division published Evo Morales: The Extraordinary Rise of the First Indigenous President of Bolivia by Martin Sivak about the Chavez ally who has received ever more press in the past year, including during the recent dramatic rescue of Chilean--and one Bolivian--miners. 
Why We Hate the Oil Companies: Straight Talk from an Energy Insider by John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil from 2005 to 2008. This title appeared last May, just after the BP oil spill began. In connection with the spill and book, Hofmeister appeared on a range of national shows.
In April 2009, Palgrave Macmillan published The Kennedy Legacy: Jack, Bobby and Ted and a Family Dream Fulfilled by Vincent Bzdek, which appeared just four months before the death of Edward Kennedy.
In After Fidel: The Inside Story of Castro's Regime and Cuba's Next Leader by Brian Latell, published in 2005, the longtime CIA analyst predicted that Raul Castro would become president, succeeding his older brother, Fidel Castro. Just such a shift happened on a temporary basis in 2006 and became formal in 2008.