Publisher · founded 1997 · New York City

PublicAffairs

New York publisher of non-fiction on politics, current affairs and public policy, founded by Peter Osnos in 1997 and part of Hachette Book Group since 2016.

Editions tracked: 22
First editions: 20
Books: 22
Years: 2002 to 2021

Search all PublicAffairs editions Website Wikidata

PublicAffairs is a publisher based in New York City, founded in 1997. We track 22 editions it published between 2002 and 2021, 20 of them first editions across 22 books. Each book lists its first edition and the points that identify it.

About PublicAffairs

PublicAffairs is a New York non-fiction publisher of books on politics, current affairs and public policy, founded in 1997 by Peter Osnos and now part of Hachette Book Group.

Osnos came to publishing from journalism. He worked as an assistant to I. F. Stone in 1965, spent 1966 to 1984 at The Washington Post as a foreign correspondent and later foreign and national editor, and then spent 1984 to 1996 at Random House, where he ran the Times Books division. He launched PublicAffairs in 1997 and served as publisher and chief executive until 2005.

The house concentrates on serious non-fiction about current affairs, public policy, foreign affairs and technology. Its list includes Muhammad Yunus's Banker to the Poor, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo's Poor Economics and Good Economics for Hard Times, and Shoshana Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019).

PublicAffairs was for years an imprint of the Perseus Books Group. When Hachette Book Group acquired Perseus's publishing business in April 2016, PublicAffairs moved with it, and Hachette's site now groups it with Basic Books Group.

We have not yet written the guide to PublicAffairs's first-edition conventions. Until we do, check each book's own page: we list its points where we know them. Know how PublicAffairs marked its firsts? Tell us.