Located in Macon, Ga., Mercer University Press has been publishing great books in the fields of Southern studies, religion, and philosophy for 45 years, since 1979. The staff of five, led by Dr. Marc A. Jolley, has more than 90 collective years at the press and is proud to deliver unmatched personal service to customers and authors.
MUP publishes 35 to 40 new books annually and uses only printers located in North America; it has published more than 1,800 titles, 1,000 of which are still active. Beyond philosophy, religion, and works that contribute to the appreciation of the American South—including memoirs and food and music histories—areas of focus extend to literary criticism, fiction, poetry, and essays.
Some of the press’s most successful books to date are The Music of the Statler Brothers: An Anthology by Don Reid, “an in-depth look at the musical career of The Statler Brothers’ forty-year reign as country music’s premier group”; The Columbus Stocking Strangler by William Rawlings, which details “what transpired during an eight-month period in 1977 and 1978, when the city of Columbus, Georgia, was terrorized by a mysterious serial killer who raped and ritualistically strangled seven elderly women in one of the community’s finer neighborhoods”; and John Milton, Paradise Lost: A Biblically Annotated Edition edited by Matthew Stallard, which “makes Milton more accessible, comprehensible, and enjoyable for everyone” and which the press says was part of American author Anne Rice’s personal library.
Mercer University Press produces works that educate and enlighten, motivate and inspire. New titles from the press that reflect this year’s UP Week theme of #StepUP are The Unfinished Dream: The Black Religious Leadership Tradition in America; Essays in Honor of Forrest E. Harris edited by Riggins R. Earl Jr., which “highlights the significant concepts and themes within the black freedom justice movements that involved black religious and moral leaders”; and Not Till We Are Lost: Thoreau, Education, and Climate Crisis by William Homestead, which “posits that the climate crisis is ultimately a spiritual crisis calling us to reset the compass.” Also available are Elizabeth Oakes Smith: Selected Writings, Volume I: Emergence and Fame, 1831–1849 and Elizabeth Oakes Smith: Selected Writings, Volume II: Feminist Journalism and Public Activism, 1850–1854, edited by Timothy H. Scherman, which reintroduces modern readers to nineteenth-century writer and political activist Elizabeth Oakes Smith through her personal letters, short fiction, essays, lectures, and other writings.
Looking ahead to 2025, the press is excited for the release of The Cross, the Candle, and the Crown: A Narrative History of Morehouse College, 1867–2021 by Marcellus Chandler Barksdale, an account of one of the nation’s leading historically Black colleges; and Henry David Thoreau and the Nick of Time: Temporality and Agency in Thoreau’s Era and Ours edited by John J. Kucich, Kathryn C. Dolan, and Henrik Otterberg, a collection of essays that “brings together a range of distinguished and exciting new Thoreau scholars from across the globe who explore some of the implications of Thoreau’s manifold explorations of the nature of time and their meaning for his world and ours—and show how a sustained attention to a writer from our not-so-distant past can help us reimagine our future.”
