PVPF 2024

Simon & Schuster Celebrates its Centenary with a list of 100 Noteworthy Works, from 'Catch-22' to 'Eloise'

Explore Simon & Schuster's rich literary legacy with 100 noteworthy works, spanning classics, bestsellers, and cultural milestones in their centenary celebration.
on Feb 01, 2024

Simon & Schuster, one of the world's largest and most prominent publishers, will celebrate its 100th anniversary this year.

To commemorate the centenary, the publisher has announced a list of 100 important titles, including bestsellers, prize winners, headline makers, and cultural superstars. The list reveals various stories, both through the books chosen and those that were not chosen, as well as the growth of what was featured.
"A group of Simon & Schuster staffers took on the daunting challenge of selecting 100 titles from our history that are believed to best represent the breadth and depth of the company's publishing programme, across imprints," the company said in a press release.

The list starts at the beginning, in 1924, with a release that helped define the publisher's long history of catering to popular interests. "The Cross Word Puzzle Book," written by F. Gregory Hartswick, Prosper Buranelli, and Margaret Petherbridge, was compiled by founders Richard Simon and Max Schuster from puzzles in the New York World, a popular newspaper at the time. "The Cross Word Puzzle Book," which came with an attached pencil, is regarded as the earliest publishing of its sort.

S&S's signature works include Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's 1974 bestseller "All the President's Men," which helped establish the publisher's renown in political nonfiction, and Joseph Heller's anti-war classic "Catch-22." The list also includes prize-winning history (David Blight's "Frederick Douglass," Taylor Branch's "Parting the Waters"), literary fiction (Don DeLillo's "Underworld"), commercial fiction (Mary Higgins Clark's "Where Are the Children?"), Dr. Benjamin Spock's revolutionary "The Common Sense Baby and Childcare Book" and the children's favourite "Eloise," by Kay Thompson and illustrator Hilary Knight.

"We wanted to convey the impact that these books had on culture over the past century, as well as the scope of what we published," says Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp.

No author could be featured twice, and works no longer accessible from Simon & Schuster were excluded, including a big release from the publisher in the 1950s: Sloan Wilson's novel "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit," about a World War II veteran's hardships at home.

From 1924 until 1976, all of the authors named were white, reflecting what Karp calls "the tenor of the times." Few writers of colour achieved mainstream success during that time period, and those who did published their most notable works elsewhere, including Ralph Ellison and Maya Angelou with Random House, Richard Wright with Harper (now HarperCollins), James Baldwin with Dial Press, Alex Haley with Doubleday, and Langston Hughes and Toni Morrison with Knopf.

"They (Richard Simon and Max Schuster) were a couple of white guys who had lists of book ideas they wanted to publish and I would suspect that a lot of those ideas reflected their cultural sensibilities and personal interests," Karp said.

Between 1977 and 2000, a few Black writers appear, beginning with Ntozake Shange's "for coloured girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf," before the list broadens in the twenty-first century. More recent selections include Jenny Han's "The Summer I Turned Pretty," Carlos Eire's "Waiting for Snow in Havana," Siddhartha Mukherjee's "The Emperor of All Maladies," Jesmyn Ward's "Sing, Unburied, Sing," Jason Reynolds' "Long Way Down," and, finally, Safiya Sinclair's acclaimed memoir "How to Say Babylon," published in 2023.

"I have distinct memories of being in the room when some of these books were being presented and feeling the energy they generated," says committee member Wendy Sheanin, Simon & Schuster's VP of Independent Retail Sales. "'How to Say Babylon' had that kind of energy and felt like a book that people will keep on reading."

Karp describes the committee debates as "lively," and claims he did not try to "big foot" anyone. One of his personal favourites, novelist John Irving, was not selected, but he successfully advocated for Bruce Springsteen's memoir, "Born to Run."

"I am glad my colleagues agreed," Karp says.

Karp publicly questioned one option. Doris Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer Prize-winning book "No Ordinary Time," about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt during World War II, was chosen over her Abraham Lincoln biography. "Team of Rivals," a narrative about Lincoln's inner group of former presidential candidates, was read by then-candidate Barack Obama, among others.

"'No Ordinary Time' is a wonderful book, but 'Team of Rivals' influenced Barack Obama's decision to make Hillary Clinton secretary of state," Karp said. "That book actually had an influence on the course of events."

Simon & Schuster, like many other major publishers, began as an individually held corporation until rapidly expanding after the 1960s. Simon & Schuster's founders had both died by the end of the 1960s, and the company had changed hands multiple times until being bought last year by the private equity firm KKR.

Along the way, Simon & Schuster purchased a large number of additional publishers, whose books are now included in the S&S catalogue and centenary list. Scribner, which Simon & Schuster acquired in 1994, published some earlier works, including F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms," and Alan Paton's "Cry, the Beloved Country." Other books that were first released elsewhere include Judy Blume's "Are You There God?" It's Me, Margaret," and B.F. Skinner's "Science and Human Behaviour."

The top 100 list not only displays the various types of books that are released, but also how they become popular.

Some works, such as "All the President's Men" and Walter Isaacson's "Steve Jobs," appeared destined from the outset to generate headlines. Others were surprise bestsellers that sold millions, like "Catch-22" and Fredrik Backman's novel "A Man Called Ove." The list also includes what Richard Simon referred to as "planned publishing," Simon & Schuster-initiated ventures such as Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People," a perennial blockbuster issued in the 1930s after S&S executive Leon Shimkin attended a Carnegie session.

"I think with the original publishers, Simon and Schuster, part of their genius was they would marry ideas to authors," says Karp, citing contemporary instances such as David McCullough's successful book about the Wright brothers. "That's something we still look to do — find the right author for the book that we think readers want."

Other celebrations for the publisher's centenary will include promotional gifts, a dedicated website, and a spring gala with Blume, Woodward, and dozens of other authors.