Princeton University Press

Princeton University Press, or PUP, publishes titles on a huge number of topics. Some subjects are so arcane, you’re shocked to discover anyone bothered to write a book about it. To paraphrase the wisdom of infamous Princeton wrestler and possible War Criminal ‘Diamond Don’ Rumsfeld: PUP publishes books about the known, the known unknown, but also the unknown unknown.
Now this is true for most university presses, and that alone merits three stars on principle. PUP, however, gets five stars for the following reasons:
1. Hardcover editions have sewn bindings and are published using cloth or buckram boards, unlike the cardboard travesties issued by most other mainstream presses.
2. All publications — yes, even paperbacks — are issued in durable, acid-​free paper. No page yellowing or – gasp! — disintegration with these babies.
3. Pages are usually printed in traditional, i.e. readable, fonts.
4. They published the posthumous works of righteous dude and ace philosopher Bernard Williams.
In addition, they publish the best book series ever: the Bollingen. It would be a great series if it only published the Divina Commedia (bilingual and with copious notes), but it also includes the first English attempt at a Collected Works of Valery, the best English edition of Unamuno, most of Eliade’s writings on religions, and all of Coleridge (including the fascinating Notebooks). Finally there are the A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts (Note: Paul Mellon started the Bollingen series), delivered annually at the National Gallery of Art. And I must single out the most recently published Mellon Lecture for special praise, Kirk Varnedoe’s Pictures of Nothing. It is an erudite account of abstract art and a moving testament to Varnedoe. Erudite because he was Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MOMA (he was our Paris, surveying the packed crowd of contemporary art and awarding a part of the golden apple to the happy few); moving because he died of cancer at a young 57 soon after his last lecture in 2003. Even if you think you don’t care about abstract art, reading his lectures will convince you that in fact you care a great deal.
It’s a shame they don’t have a storefront like Harvard University Press. Ah well. PUP = 5 stars