History
Capturing on the renewed interest in World War II, Ballantine's; in conjunction with the British publishing house Purnell's, starting publishing the Illustrated History of World War II paperbacks in 1968. The series was divided into Weapons (43 books), Battles (31 books), Campaigns (29 books), and War Leaders (30 books) sub-series, and was an immediate success with a cost per book of only 1 US dollar at first. The books were well written by a who's who of Military Historians of the late 60's and early 70's. Some titles had several printings (Patton had five), while others were limited to one, and experienced poor sales. Starting in 1973, the series was retitled to The Illustrated History of the Violent Century, and added books on World War I, the war in IndoChina, and the Middle East conflict. Two additional sub-series were added (Human Conflict and Politics In Action) to address points of history that occurred outside of the wars. By the summer of 1975 interest in the series fell off with only a few further titles published. By 1976 all were out of print, but were being snatched up by collectors. The success of the series added significant funds to the corporate balance sheet, and lead to further books on history being published.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
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—Henry James (1843–1916)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)