Da Capo Press turns 50 this year and will be celebrating the milestone in its booth (1406, Perseus Books Group) with a champagne toast, 4–5 p.m., this afternoon. “Our 50th anniversary is an excellent chance for us to look back at how far we’ve come since joining the Perseus Books Group 15 years ago. The books, and the personalities behind them, keep getting bigger, and we’ll continue to look for authors who have major national platforms that we can tap into—and work with them to expand. And we’ll continue to acquire books that play to our broad range of Da Capo’s core strengths: history, music, and the performing arts, practical business, wellness, and healthy eating,” says John Radziewicz, Da Capo v-p and publisher.
Two books Da Capo thinks represent its core strengths, and which the publisher will be giving away galleys of during BEA, are Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians by Justin Martin, which Kirkus is naming one of its big books of BEA, and How to Ruin a Queen by Jonathan Beckman, both due in September. Other fall titles Da Capo will be talking up at BEA include Easy Street (The Hard Way) by Ron Perlman (Sept.), The Lagasse Girls’ Big Flavor, Bold Taste—and No Gluten! by Jilly Lagasse and Jessie Lagasse Swanson, Emeril’s daughters (Oct.), and I’m the Man by Scott Ian, the guitarist for the thrash-metal band Anthrax (Oct.). Another celebratory giveaway will be tote bags with its new logo.
Over the past half-century, Da Capo has published numerous New York Times bestsellers, 10 in just the past decade, with its authors earning multiple awards and accolades, from a Kennedy Center Honor to a Citizens Medal. Publishing in categories ranging from sports books to celebrity memoirs, some bestsellers include H.G. Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights, Toby Young’s How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Jenny McCarthy’s Belly Laughs, and Tony Iommi’s Iron Man.
