Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane.^[1] Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large audiences existed for serious books. Penguin also had a significant impact on public debate in Britain, through its books on politics, the arts, and science.^[2] Penguin Books is now the flagship imprint of the worldwide Penguin Group and is owned by Pearson PLC.^[3]

Origins[link]

The first Penguin paperbacks were published in 1936,^[4] but at first only as an imprint of Bodley Head (of Vigo Street) with the books originally distributed from the crypt of Holy Trinity Church Marylebone. Only paperback editions were published until the “King Penguin” series debuted in 1939^[5], and latterly the Pelican History of Art was undertaken: these were unsuitable as paperbacks because of the length and copious illustrations on art paper so cloth bindings were chosen instead. Penguin Books has its registered office in the City of Westminster, London, England.^[6][7]

Anecdotally Lane recounted how it was his experience of the poor quality of reading material on offer at Exeter train station that inspired him to create cheap, well designed quality books for the mass market^[8]. Though the publication of literature in paperback was then associated mainly with poor quality, lurid fiction the Penguin brand owed something to the short lived Albatross imprint of British and American reprints that briefly traded in 1932^[9]. Inexpensive paperbacks did not initially appear viable to Bodley Head, since the deliberately low price of 6d. made profitability seem unlikely. This helped Allen Lane purchase publication rights for some works more cheaply than he otherwise might have done since other publishers were convinced of the short term prospects of the business. In the face of resistance from the traditional book trade^[10] it was the purchase of 63,000 books by Woolworth^[11] that paid for the project outright, confirmed its worth and allowed Lane to establish Penguin as a separate business in 1936. By March 1936, ten months after the company's launch on 30 July 1935, one million Penguin books had been printed. This early flush of success brought expansion and the appointment of Eunice Frost, first as a secretary then as editor and ultimately as a director, who was to have a pivotal influence in shaping the company^[12].

From the outset, design was essential to the success of the Penguin brand. Eschewing the illustrated gaudiness of other paperback publishers, Penguin opted for the simple appearance of three horizontal bands, the upper and lower of which were colour coded according to which series the title belonged to; this is sometimes referred to as the horizontal grid. In the central white panel, the author and title were printed in Gill Sans and in the upper band was a cartouche with the legend "Penguin Books". The initial design was created by the then twenty-one-year-old office junior Edward Young, who also drew the first version of the Penguin logo. Series such as Penguin Specials and The Penguin Shakespeare had individual designs (by 1937 only S1 and B1-B18 had been published).

The colour schemes included: orange and white for general fiction, green and white for crime fiction, cerise and white for travel and adventure, dark blue and white for biographies, yellow and white for miscellaneous, red and white for drama; and the rarer purple and white for essays and belles lettres and grey and white for world affairs. Lane actively resisted the introduction of cover images for several years. Some recent publications of literature from that time have duplicated the original look.

From 1937 and on, the headquarters of Penguin Books was at Harmondsworth north of London and so it remained until the 1990s when a merge with Viking involved the head office moving into London (27 Wrights Lane, W8 5TZ).

War years[link]

The Second World War saw the company established as a national institution, though it had no formal role, Penguin was integral to war effort thanks in no small part to the publication of bestselling manuals Keeping Poultry and Rabbits on Scraps and Aircraft Recognition and supplying books for the services and POWs. Penguin printed some 600 titles and started nineteen new series in the six years of the war^[13] and a time of enormous increase in the demand for books^[14], consequently Penguin enjoyed a privileged place amongst its peers.

1st book Harold Nicholson Why britain is at war. Paper rationing, march 1940 quota based on usage Aug 38-39 penguin sold 9 million that year, special editions to soldiers and pows additional supplies. Moberley pool, book production war economy agreement jan 1942 - type size paper use. Aircraft recognition, Rabbit breeding best seller. Forces book club penguin monopoly. At the bottom of the final page is "FOR THE FORCES Leave this book at a Post Office when you have read it, so that men and women in the Services may enjoy it too" red cross. CEMA, ABCA bill williams preferential treatment.

Role in labour victor.

Post-war history[link]

In 1945 Penguin began what would become one of its most important branches, the Penguin Classics, with a translation of Homer's Odyssey by E. V. Rieu. Between 1947 and 1949, the German typographer Jan Tschichold redesigned 500 Penguin books, and left Penguin with a set of influential rules of design principles brought together as the Penguin Composition Rules, a four page booklet of typographic instructions for editors and compositors. Tschichold's work included the woodcut illustrated covers of the classics series (also known as the medallion series), and with Hans Schmoller, his eventual successor at Penguin, the vertical grid covers that became the standard for Penguin fiction throughout the 1950s. By this time the paperback industry in the UK had begun to grow, and Penguin found itself in competition with then fledgeling Pan Books. Many other series were published such as the Buildings of England, the Pelican History of Art and Penguin Education.

By 1960, a number of forces were to shape the direction of the company, the publication list and its graphic design. On 20 April 1961, Penguin became a publicly listed company on the London Stock Exchange; consequently, Allen Lane had a diminished role at the firm though he was to continue as Managing Director. New techniques such as phototypesetting and offset-litho printing were to replace hot metal and letterpress printing, dramatically reducing cost and permitting the printing of images and text on the same paper stock, thus paving the way for the introduction of photography and novel approaches to graphic design on paperback covers. In May 1960, Tony Godwin was appointed as editorial adviser, rapidly rising to Chief Editor from which position he sought to broaden the range of Penguin's list and keep up with new developments in graphic design. To this end, he hired Germano Facetti in January 1961, who was to decisively alter the appearance of the Penguin brand. Beginning with the crime series, Facetti canvassed the opinion of a number of designers including Romek Marber for a new look to the Penguin cover. It was Marber's suggestion of what came to be called the Marber grid along with the retention of traditional Penguin colour coding that was to replace the previous three horizontal bars design and set the pattern for the design of the company's paperbacks for the next twenty years. Facetti rolled out the new treatment across the Penguin line starting with crime, the orange fiction series, then Pelicans, Penguin Modern Classics, Penguin Specials, and Penguin Classics, giving an overall visual unity to the company's list. A somewhat different approach was taken to the Peregrine, Penguin Poets, Penguin Modern Poets, and Penguin Plays series. There were over a hundred different series published in total.

Just as Lane well judged the public's appetite for paperbacks in the 1930s, his decision to publish Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence in 1960 boosted Penguin's notoriety. The novel was at the time unpublished in the United Kingdom and the predicted obscenity trial not only marked Penguin as a fearless publisher, it also helped drive the sale of at least 3.5 million copies. Penguin's victory in the case heralded the end to the censorship of books in the UK, although censorship of the written word was only finally defeated after the Inside Linda Lovelace trial of 1978.

Pearson takeover[link]

By the end of the 1960s Penguin was in financial trouble, a number of buy-out proposals were made including that of a consortium of universities or the joint ownership of Penguin by the CUP and OUP^[15], none of which came to anything. Ultimately, the company was bought out by Pearson Longman on 21 August 1970, some six weeks after the death of Allen Lane. A new emphasis on profitability emerged and, with the departure of Facetti in 1972, the defining era of Penguin book design came to an end. Later changes included the disappearance of 'Harmondsworth' as the place of publication: this was replaced by a London office address. From 1937 the headquarters of Penguin Books was at Harmondsworth west of London and so it remained until the 1990s when a merge with Viking involved the head office moving into London (27 Wrights Lane, W8 5TZ).

In the company's tradition of courting controversy, Penguin published Deborah Lipstadt's book Denying the Holocaust which accused David Irving of Holocaust denial. Irving sued Lipstadt and Penguin for libel in 1998 but lost in a widely publicised trial. Other controversial titles published by Penguin include Siné′s Massacre, Spycatcher and The Satanic Verses.

In 2006, Penguin attempted to involve the public in collaboratively writing a novel on a wiki platform. They named this project A Million Penguins. On 7 March 2007, the Penguin Books UK blog announced that the project had come to an end.^[16]

Imprints and series[link]

Penguin Classics[link]

Consonant with Penguin`s corporate mission to bring canonical literature to the mass market the company first ventured into publishing the classics in May 1938 with the issue of Penguin Illustrated Classics<sup>[17]</sup>. The savings from the author`s rights on these royalty free titles were instead invested in commissioning woodcut engravings from Robert Gibbings and his circle emanating from the Central School of Arts and Crafts. The books were distinct from the rest of the Penguin marque in their use of a vertical grid (anticipating Tschichold`s innovation of 1951) and albertus typeface. The series was not a financial success and the list ceased after just ten volumes the same year it began. Penguin returned to classics with the printing of E. V. Rieu`s translation of Homer`s Odyssey in 1946, which went on to sell three million copies^[18].

Pengin's commercial motivation was, as ever, populist; rending the classics in an approachable modern English was therefore a difficult task whose execution did not always satisfy the critics^[19]. Dr Rieu said of his work that "I have done my best to make Homer easy reading for those who are unfamiliar with the Greek world"^[20]. He was joined in 1959 by Betty Radice who was first his assistant then, after his retirement in 1964, she assumed the role of joint editor with Robert Baldick. As the publisher's focus changed from the needs of the marketplace to those of the classroom the criticism became more acute, Thomas Gould wrote of the series "most of the philosophical volumes in the Penguin series are bad - some very bad indeed. Since Plato and Aristotle are the most read philosophers in the world today, and since some of these Penguin translations are favourites among professional philosophers in several countries, this amounts to a minor crisis in the history of philosophy"^[21].

The imprint publishes hundreds of classics from the Greeks and Romans to Victorian Literature to modern classics. For nearly twenty years, variously coloured borders to the front and back covers indicated the original language. The second period of design meant largely black covers with a colour illustration on the front. In 2002, Penguin announced it was redesigning its entire catalogue, merging the original Classics list (known in the trade as "Black Classics") with what had been the old Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics list, though the silver covers for the latter have so far been retained for most of the titles. Previously this line had been called 'Penguin Modern Classics' with a pale green livery.

The redesign — featuring a colourful painting on the cover, with black background and orange lettering — was well received. However, the quality of the paperbacks themselves seemed to decrease: the spines were more likely to fold and bend. The paperbacks are also printed on non-acid-free pulp paper which, by some accounts, tends to yellow and brown within a couple of years.^[22]

The text page design was also overhauled to follow a more closely prescribed template, allowing for faster copyediting and typesetting, but reducing the options for individual design variations suggested by a text's structure or historical context (for example, in the choice of text typeface). Prior to 2002 the text page typography of each book in the Classics series had been overseen by a team of in-house designers; this department was closed in 2003 as part of the production costs rationalisation of the Classics list, and any design work is now done by editors and outside suppliers.

Pelican books[link]

Lane expanded the business in 1937 with the publication of George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism under the Pelican Books imprint, an imprint designed to educate the reading public rather than entertain. Recognising his own limitations Lane appointed V. K. Krishna Menon as the first commissioning edition of the series, supported by an advisory panel consisting of Peter Chalmers Mitchell, H. L. Bales and W. E. Williams. Several thousand Pelicans were published over the next half-century and brought high quality accounts of the current state of knowledge in many fields, often written by authors of specialised academic books.^[23] (The Pelican series, in decline for several years, was finally discontinued in 1984.)

Aircraft Recognition (S82) by R. A. Saville-Sneath, was a best seller. In 1940, the children's imprint Puffin Books began with a series of non-fiction picture books; the first work of children's fiction published under the imprint was Barbara Euphan Todd's Worzel Gummidge the following year. Another series which began in wartime was the Penguin Poets: the first volume was a selection of Tennyson's poems (D1) in 1941. Later examples are The Penguin Book of Modern American Verse (D22), 1954, and The Penguin Book of Restoration Verse (D108), 1968. J. M. Cohen's Comic and Curious Verse appeared in three volumes over a number of years.

Penguin Specials[link]

In November 1937 Penguin inaugurated a new series of short, polemical books under the rubric of Penguin Specials with the publication of Edgar Mowrer`s Germany Puts the Clock Back. Their purpose was to offer in-depth analysis of current affairs that would counter the perceived bias of the newspapers in addition to being the company`s response to the popularity of Gollancz`s Left Book Club. Whereas the Left Book Club was avowedly pro-Soviet, Penguin and Lane expressed no political preference as their editorial policy, though the widespread belief was that the series was left-leaning<sup>[24]</sup> since the editor was the communist Peter Lehmann and it`s authors were, with a few exceptions,^[25] men of the left. Speed of publication and delivery (a turnaround of weeks rather than months) were essential to the topicality and therefore success of the Specials, Genevieve Tabouis`s anti-appeasement tract Blackmail or War sold over 200,000 copies for example. However even this immediacy did not prevent them being overtaken by events: Shiela Grant Duff's Europe and the Czechs only made it onto the bookstands on the day of the Munich agreement, but nevertheless went on to be a bestseller. Thirty-five Penguin Specials were published before the outbreak of war, including two novels Hasek`s Good Soldier Schweik and Bottome`s The Mortal Storm;they collectively made a significant contribution to the public debate of the time, with many of the more controversial titles being the subject of leading articles in the Press.

After a hiatus between 1945 and 1949 the Penguin Specials continued after the war under the editorship of first Tom Maschler, then after 1961 Tony Godwin. The first title in the revived series was William Gallacher`s The Case for Communism.<sup>[26]</sup> Godwin initiated the `What`s Wrong with Britiain` series of Specials in the run up to the 1964 election, which constituted a platform for the New Left`s brand of cultural analysis that characterised the leftist political radicalism of the sixties. Indeed Penguin Books contributed to the funds that set up Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in 1964.<sup>[27]</sup> This brief period of revival for Penguin Specials in contributing to the national dialogue was not sustained after the departure of Godwin in 1967, and with the rise in television journalism the Specials series declined in significance through the seventies and eighties. The last Special was published in 1988 with Keith Thompson`s Under siege: racism and violence in Britain today.^[28]

Puffin[link]

See main article Puffin Books

Noel Carrington, an editor at Country Life magazine, first approached Lane with the idea of publishing low cost, illustrated non-fiction children's books in 1938. Inspired by the Editions Père Castor books drawn by Rojan and the technique of auto lithography used in the poster art of the time, Carrington's suggestion for what was to become the Puffin Picture Book series was adopted by Penguin in 1940 when, as Lane saw it, evacuated city children would need books on farming and natural history to help adjust to the country^[29]. The first four titles appeared in December 1940; War on Land, War at Sea, War in the Air and On the Farm, and a further nine the following year. Despite Lane's intention to publish twelve a year paper and staff shortages meant only thirteen were issued in the first two years of the series. The Picture Books' 120 titles resulted in 260 variants altogether, the last number 116 Paxton Chadwick's Life Histories, was issued hors série in 1996 by the Penguin Collector's Society.

Inexpensive paperback children's fiction did not exist at the time Penguin sought to expand their list into this new market. To this end Eleanor Graham was appointed in 1941 as the first editor of the Puffin Story Books series^[30], a venture made particularly difficult due to the resistance of publishers and librarians in releasing the rights of their children's books. The first five titles, Worzel Gummidge, Cornish Adventure, The Cuckoo Clock, Garram the Hunter and Smokey were published in the three horizontal stripes company livery of the rest of the Penguin output, a practice abandoned after the ninth volume when full-bleed colour illustrated covers were introduced, a fact that heralded the much greater design freedom of the Puffin series over the rest of Penguin's books. Graham retired in 1961 and was replaced by Kaye Webb who presided over the department for 18 years in a period that saw greatly increased competition in the children's market as well as a greater sophistication in production and marketing. One innovation of Webb's was the creation of the PuffinClub in 1967 and its quarterly magazine the Puffin Post, which at its height had 200,000 members. The Puffin authors' list added Arthur Ransome, Roald Dahl and Ursula le Guin during Webb' editorship and saw the creation the Peacock series of teenage fiction.

The Buildings of England[link]

Main article Pevsner Architectural Guides

Nikolaus Pevsner first proposed a series of volumes amounting to a county by county survey of the monuments of England in ten or more books to both the Cambridge University Press and Routledge before the war, however for various reason his plan came to nothing^[31]. It was only through his involvement with Penguin that he was in a position to make a similar suggestion to Allen Lane and be accepted. Pevsner described the project of the Buildings of England as an attempt to fill the gap in English publishing for those multi-volume survey of national art familiar on the continent. In particular Georg Dehio's Handbuch der deutschen Kunstdenkmaler, a topographical inventory of Germany's important historic buildings which was published in five volumes between 1905 and 1912^[32]. Though Pevsner's ambition for the series was to educate and inform the general public on the subtleties of English architectural history, the immediate commercial imperative was competition with the Shell Guides edited by John Betjeman of which thirteen had been published by 1939^[33]. With Lane's agreement in 1945 Pevsner began work personally touring the county that was to be the subject of observation aided by notes drawn up by researchers. The first volume, Cornwall, appeared in 1951, and went on to produce 46 architectural guidebooks between then and 1974 of which he wrote thirty-two alone and ten with assistance. As early as 1954 the series was in commercial difficulty and required sponsorship to continue, a grant from the Leverhulme Trust amongst other sources^[34] secured its completion. The series continued after Pevsner's death in 1983, financed in part by the Pevsner Books Trust and published by Yale University Press.

Pevsner's approach was of Kunstgesichte quite distinct from the antiquarian interest of local and family history typical of English county histories. Consequently there is little mention of monumental brasses, bells, tracery, the relationship of the building to the landscape^[35]. Nor is there much discussion on building techniques, nor industrial architecture, nor on Art Deco buildings, omissions which his critics hold have led to those subjects undervaluation and neglect^[36]. Nevertheless Pevsner's synoptic study brought rigorous architectural history to an appreciative mass audience, and in particular he enlarged the perception of the Victorian achievement in architecture..

Magazine publishing[link]

Wartime paper rationing, which had resulted in a generous allocation to Penguin, also forced the reduction in space for book reviews and advertising in the newspapers and was partly the cause of the folding of several literary journals, consequently left a gap in the magazine market that Lane hoped to fill. In january 1941the first issue of Penguin New Writing appeared and instantly dominated the market with 80,000 copies sold compared to its closest rival, Cyril Connolly`s Horizon, which mustered 3,500 sales in its first edition. Penguin New Writing`s editor Peter Lehmann was instrumental in introducing the British public to such new writers as Lawrence Durrell, Saul Bellow and James Michie. Yet despite popular and critical success further rationing and, after 1945 declining sales, led monthly publication to become quarterly until the journal finally closed in autumn 1950 after 40 issues.

Though New Writing was the most durable of Penguin`s periodicals it wasn`t the publisher`s only foray into journalism with Russian Review and Transatlantic begun during the war, and Penguin Film Review, Penguin Music Magazine, New Biology, Penguin Parade, Penguin Hansard and Penguin Science News having brief runs after.

Popular Penguins[link]

Penguin's Australian subsidiary released the Popular Penguins series late in 2008. The series has its own website.^[37] It was intended to include 50 titles, many of which duplicate those on the Penguin Celebrations list but this was reduced to 49 titles as one of the 50, Hegemony or Survival by Noam Chomsky,^[38] had to be withdrawn after its initial release as Penguin discovered they no longer held the rights to it.

Popular Penguins are presented as a return to Lane's original ethos – good books at affordable prices. They have been published with a cover price of $AUD9.95, less than half of the average price of a paperback novel in Australia at the time of release.

Popular Penguins are presented in a more 'authentic' interpretation of the Penguin Grid than that of the Celebrations series. They are correct size, when compared to an original 'grid-era' Penguin, and they use Eric Gill's typefaces in a more or less exact match for Jan Tschichold's 'tidying' of Edward Young's original three panel cover design. The covers are also printed on a card stock which mirrors the look and feel of 1940s and 50s Penguin covers. On the other hand, all of the Popular Penguins series are in Penguin Orange, and not colour coded in the manner of the original designs and the 'Celebrations' titles.

In July 2009 another 50 Popular Penguins were released onto the Australian and New Zealand markets.^[39] A further 10 titles written by New Zealand authors were released in March 2010.^[40] Another 75 titles were released in Australia in July 2010 to mark Penguin's 75th anniversary.^[41]

Pelican History of Art[link]

Allen Lane approached Nikolaus Pevsner in 1945 for a series of illustrated books that would match the success of the King Penguins. Pevsner recalled his response “Allen said, `You have done the King Penguins now and we are going on with them, but if you had your way, what else would you do?` I had my answer ready - and the answer was very formidable, because I outlined both The Pelican History of Art and The Buildings of England on the spot, each about 40 to 50 volumes. Allen said, `Yes, we can do both,` and that was the end of the meeting.”^[42] Pevsner`s industry quickly bore fruit with the first contracts signed by 1946 for John Summerson`s Architecture in Britain, Anthony Blunt`s Art and Architecture in France, and Rudolph Wittkower`s Italian art and architecture, the first title Painting in Britain, 1530-1790 by Ellis Waterhouse was issued in 1953. By 1955 Pevsner produced a prospectus for the series announcing the publication of four new volumes and a plan for the rest of the series totalling forty-seven titles. The ambition of the series exceeded previously published multi-volume histories of art such as André Michel`s Histoire de l`art (17 vols, 1905-28), the Propyläen Kunstgeschichte (25 vols, 1923-35). Forty-one volumes were published by the time Pevsner retired from editing in 1977, his work was continued by his editorial assistant on the Buildings of England Judy Nairn and the medievalist Peter Lasko. Yale University Press acquired the series in 1992 when 45 titles had been completed, they subsequentently published 21 vols, mostly revisions of existing editions.^[43]

For Penguin the series was a departure from their commercial mainstay of paperbacks as the histories of art were the first large format, illustrated hardback books they had produced.^[44] Despite their relatively high price they were a financial success, yet for Pevsner they were intended primarily as graduate level texts in what was, for the English speaking world, the newly emerging academic discipline of art history.^[45] Nevertheless the series was criticised from within the academy for its evident biases. Many of its authors were German émigrés, consequently there was a methodological preference for the kunstwissenschaft practiced in Vienna and Berlin between the wars; a formalism that ignored the social context of art.^[46] Moreover the weight given to some subjects seemed disproportionate to some critics, with seven of its forty-seven volumes dedicated to English art, a “tributary of the main European current” as the Burlington Magazine observed.^[47] Though the 1955 plan was never fully executed - the volumes on Greek painting and sculpture, quattrocento painting and cinquecento sculpture were not written - the Pelican History remains one of the most comprehensive surveys of world art published.

Other series[link]

Other series include: Penguin Modern Painters, Shakespeare, new Shakespeare, music scores, poetry, handbooks, crime, peregrines, modern poets, play, sci-fi, education, university titles, library of physical sciences, modern European poets, cookery, new king penguins, reference, originals, penguin 60s, essentials, great ideas, ptarmigan, guides, kestrel, and dolphin.

See also[link]

• Penguin Collectors Society

References[link]

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

• Official web sites
  • Penguin Group
  • Company history at Penguin UK

• Other
  • Penguin Archive University of Bristol Library Special Collections
  • Penguin Archive Project University of Bristol
  • The Art of Penguin Science Fiction The history and cover art of science fiction published by Penguin Books from 1935 to the present day
  • Penguin book covers
  • Penguin Cerise Travel Celebrating Penguin Books' early 'Travel and Adventure' series
  • Foley Collection — articles and extensive lists
  • History of the Penguin Archive by Toby Clements, The Telegraph, 19 February 2009

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The Books were an American duo, formed in New York City in 1999, consisting of guitarist and vocalist Nick Zammuto and cellist Paul de Jong. Their releases typically incorporate samples of obscure sounds and speech.^[1][2] They have released three critically acclaimed albums on the German label Tomlab, and released their fourth studio album, The Way Out, on Temporary Residence Limited in July 2010.

History[link]

[edit] 1999–2002: Thought for Food

Zammuto and de Jong first met in New York City in 1999 as they shared the same apartment building.^[3] De Jong invited Zammuto to dinner at his apartment, where he played him some of his collection of audio and video samples, including a Shooby Taylor record.^[4] Zammuto said of their meeting that "we both kind of knew at that moment that we listened (to music) in interesting ways and had similar approaches to music."^[5] Soon after, they began playing what they considered to be pop music, in comparison to their own works, under the name The Books.^[5]

In 2000, The Books started work on what would become their début album Thought for Food.^[6] Zammuto and de Jong moved locations constantly during this time,^[6] recording in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and finally in the basement of a hostel in North Carolina where Zammuto worked for a while after hiking the Appalachian Trail.^[5][7]

Thought for Food was released on October 22nd, 2002.^[8] Praised by critics for its distinctive sound,^[9] it featured extensive sampling from obscure sources coupled with mostly acoustic instrumentation.

[edit] 2002–2003: The Lemon of Pink

Shortly after the release of Thought for Food, the band relocated to North Adams, Massachusetts, near where Zammuto had graduated from Williams College in 1999, studying chemistry and visual arts.^[10] Zammuto and de Jong began the recording of The Lemon of Pink around this time. Anne Doerner, a guest vocalist on the album, said the process was much more arduous than the recording of Thought for Food, with Zammuto working on the album for five straight months.^[5]

The Lemon of Pink was released to critical acclaim^[11] on October 7th, 2003.^[12] It is similar in style to Thought for Food, but oriented more around vocals performed mostly by Anne Doerner.

[edit] 2003–2006: Lost and Safe, Music for a French Elevator, Prefuse 73 Reads The Books

In 2004, the French Ministry of Culture asked The Books to compose music for a new elevator in their building. The Books released a Mini CD of this work in 2006, under the name Music for a French Elevator and Other Short Format Oddities by the Books.^[13]

On April 5, 2005, The Books released their third studio album, Lost and Safe. Zammuto has a greater vocal presence in this album, and the album was criticized for this change of sound.^[14] Aside from this, Lost and Safe was well received by critics.^[15] Throughout early 2005, The Books collobarated with the electronica artist Prefuse 73. The Books appear on his album Surrounded by Silence ("Pagina Dos"), and the E.P. Prefuse 73 Reads the Books E.P. collects remixes of material sourced from The Books' albums.

Before starting a three-month^[16] tour of North America in April 2006, The Books had played only one concert,^[7] in October 2003 at a festival in Chicago, Illinois.^[17] Zammuto has expressed apprehensiveness towards touring, but says it is necessary to make a living, given his belief that people downloading The Books' music via file-sharing^[18] has put him under financial strain.

[edit] 2006–2012: Hiatus, The Way Out and break-up

Following the release of Music for a French Elevator, the band took a break from recording to tend to their new families, tour in support of their albums, and pursue some of their own projects, which included Zammuto scoring a feature documentary about the Biosphere 2.^[10]

In 2007, The Books released Play All, a DVD of thirteen music videos and three previously unreleased tracks.^[19] The Play All videos are composed of found footage transformed into a collage that matches their music. The Books often screen these videos during their live performances.^[20]

The Books toured heavily between 2005 and 2007, including two tours in Europe and two Canadian shows.^[6] In early 2009 The Books covered the Nick Drake song "Cello Song" in collaboration with José González for the Red Hot Organization's Dark Was the Night fund-raising album.^[21]

The Books began working on The Way Out in late 2008.^[22] Zammuto spoke of the album's New Age themes in an interview in April 2009, saying they took samples from self-help and hypnotherapy cassettes. When asked to describe the album, Zammuto said "You're getting verrry sleepy."^[3] On April 5, 2010, the duo announced that The Way Out would be released through Temporary Residence Limited in July.^[22] On April 27 Pitchfork Media began streaming the track "Beautiful People",^[23] which Zammuto described as "a three part christian harmony mixed with a sort of euro-disco-trash beat, an orchestra’s worth of sampled brass and lyrics about the twelfth root of two (my favorite irrational number), trigonometry and tangrams".^[24] The album was released on July 20.

The Books played the ATP New York 2010 music festival in Monticello, New York, in September 2010 and are currently touring North American tour with the Black Heart Procession. The band have been chosen by Portishead & ATP to perform at the ATP I'll Be Your Mirror festival that they will curate in July 2011 at London's Alexandra Palace.^[25]

In January of 2012, Nick Zammuto announced in an interview via Pitchfork Media that The Books were splitting up to focus on other projects.^[26]

On April 3rd 2012, Nick Zammuto released Zammuto, under the moniker Zammuto.

Musical style[link]

The Books are commonly cited by critics to be of a genre of their own,.^[27] Zammuto has described it as collage music.^[18] Paul de Jong described it as "the new folk music...[w]e make our own instruments, use our own libraries of sound bites while trying to create something universally human."^[28] Although they have said that their influences include Nirvana, David Bowie, Roxy Music as well as new wave and classical music, these do not show prominently in their music,^[29] though Zammuto was directly influenced by electronic musicians Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada.^[30][31] The Books' music usually consists of acoustic instrumentation of folk melodies usually played on guitar, cello, banjo and more, combined with a diverse range of samples obtained from cassettes found in thrift stores,^[18] which are digitally processed and edited.^[5] They also rarely use a drum kit in recordings and performances, instead favouring inanimate objects like children's toys and filing cabinets, which are sampled and looped.^[29] Some observers contend that their music is aleatoric,^[32] but Zammuto has disagreed, saying the music is very tightly controlled.^[18]