Joy de Menil

I am eager to publish scholars at the top of their fields who want to communicate their knowledge to a broad readership, and young and original thinkers with a strong voice on the page. I am particularly interested in history and science (especially psychology). I work closely with my authors to structure and shape the final manuscript and guide them through every aspect of publication. I work closely with my authors to ensure that their books and ideas get maximal coverage at the point of publication. I have recently published a study of bystanders and upstanders by social psychologist Catherine Sanderson, a gripping narrative history of the most important environmental case ever to make it to the Supreme Court by Harvard Law School professor Richard Lazarus, a terrific look at fascism’s conflation of the personal and political by Columbia historian Victoria de Grazia, a groundbreaking reconsideration of Renaissance political thought by James Hankins, and an alarmingly timely book on the cutting edge science of Healthy Buildings by Joseph Allen from Harvard School of Public Health and John Macomber from the Harvard Business School. This spring I will publish two important histories of race in America, Traveling Black by Mia Bay and Justice Rising by Patricia Sullivan.

I spent 25 years as a trade publisher before joining Harvard University Press, working at Random House and Viking Penguin, where I published Andrew Roberts’s Churchill and Napoleon, Dan Jones’s The Plantagenets and The Templars, Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Christianity and Thomas Cromwell, Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects, Sonia Purnell’s Clementine, William Stixrud and Ned Johnson’s The Self-Driven Child, Megan McArdle’s The Up Side of Down, Margaret MacMillan’s Paris 1919, Bernard Lewis’s The Crisis of Islam, and Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, among others.

Recent Books

Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White
Patricia Sullivan

Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance
Mia Bay

Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote
Susan Ware

The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy
Victoria de Grazia

The Rule of Five: Making Climate History at the Supreme Court
Richard J. Lazarus

Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity
Joseph G. Allen and John D. Macomber

Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels
Catherine A. Sanderson

Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire
Tom Zoellner

Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy
James Hankins

De Gaulle
Julian Jackson

The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics
Ben Buchanan

The Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI
Marcus du Sautoy