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Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections, both formal and informal, to Princeton University. Its fundamental mission is to disseminate scholarship through books, journals, and other media within academia and society at large.

With the financial support of Charles Scribner, the Press was founded by Whitney Darrow in 1905 as a printing press to serve the Princeton community. Its first book, published in 1912, was a new edition of Lectures on Moral Philosophy by John Witherspoon. Since then, the Press has sought to publish original work by the best minds in academia.

Six Princeton University Press books have won Pulitzer Prizes:

• Russia Leaves the War — George F. Kennan (1957)
• Banks and Politics in America From the Revolution to the Civil War — Bray Hammond (1958)
• Between War and Peace — Herbert Feis (1961)
• Washington, Village and Capital — Constance McLaughlin Green (1963)
• The Greenback Era — Irwin Unger (1965)
• Machiavelli in Hell — Sebastian de Grazia (1989)

The Bollingen Foundation, initially a project of Paul Mellon's Old Dominion Foundation in 1943, initiated the Bollingen Series. From 1945, the Bollingen Foundation had independent status, publishing and providing fellowships and grants in several areas of study including archaeology, poetry, and psychology. The Series was given to the University in 1969 when the Foundation became inactive.

• Bollingen Series at Princeton University Press (2006)

In addition to publishing original scholarship, the Press has undertaken several multi-volume papers projects, including:

• The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (a project begun in 1905 while Woodrow Wilson was president of the University)
• The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (sixty nine volumes)
• The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau
• The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein

Recent books by notable authors include:

• Making Democracy Work:Civic Traditions in Modern Italy — Robert Putnam, with Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti (1994)
• The History and Geography of Human Genes — Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and Alberto Piazza (1994)
• T. Rex and the Crater of Doom — Walter Alvarez (1997)
• Irrational Exuberance — Robert Shiller (a New York Times bestseller) (2000, first edition) (2005, second edition)
• The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions — William G. Bowen and Derek Bok (2000)
• The Nature of Space and Time — Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose (2000)
• On Bullshit — Harry Frankfurt (a New York Times bestseller) (2005)
• Sharks of the World — Leonard Compagno and Sarah Fowler with Marc Dando (Illustrations). Princeton Field Guide series. (2005)

• 1905-1917: Whitney Darrow
• 1917-1938: Paul G. Tomlinson
• 1938-1942: Joseph Brandt
• 1942-1952: Datus C. Smith, Jr.
• 1952-1954: Norvell B. Samuels, acting director
• 1954-1986: Herbert S. Bailey, Jr.
• 1986-2005: Walter H. Lippincott, Jr.
• 2005-present: Peter J. Dougherty

Princeton University Press books which have been particularly influential include the following. See A Century in Books for more information about these books:

• The Meaning of Relativity — Albert Einstein (1922)
• And Still the Waters Run — Angie Debo (1940)
• Twelve Who Ruled — R. R. Palmer (1941)
• Atomic Energy for Military Purposes — Henry DeWolf Smyth (1945)
• How to Solve It — George Polya (1945)
• The Open Society and Its Enemies — Karl Popper (1945)
• The Hero With a Thousand Faces — Joseph Campbell (1949)
• Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature — Erich Auerbach (1953)
• The Wilhelm/Baynes translation of The I Ching or Book of Changes (Bollingen Series XIX) (first copyright 1950; 27th printing 1997)
• Anatomy of Criticism — Northrop Frye (1957)
• The King's Two Bodies — Ernst H. Kantorowicz (1957)
• The Passion and the Interests --Albert O. Hirschman (1977)
• Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature — Richard Rorty (1979)
• Leviathan and the Air-Pump -- Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer (1985)
• QED — Richard Feynman (1985)

• A History of Princeton University Press (2002)
• Interview with Sam Elworthy (assistant press director, editor-in-chief (biology), executive editor of the Princeton University Press Papers Projects), early 2007.