You have probably noticed the large number of “Year in Review” articles that spring up during the Holiday season. Well, SDSHS Press doesn’t want to be left out, so here is our own little review of the year that was.
2011 has been an excellent year for us. We’ve worked hard over the past 14 years to solidify our reputation as a publisher of well-written, well-edited, and well-produced history books, and as we prepare to celebrate our 15th year in existence, we published our 50th title!
We’re proud of every single book we have published, of course, but this past year has seen some real gems come through. We’ve branched into new territory in the form of sports history, and Six, the story of small-town football success, has been well received with favorable reviews and plenty of media coverage. We also published a children’s sports history book in the form of Umpire in a Skirt, which tells the story of the first paid, female baseball umpire in the country.
We continued to publish memoir of the finest kind, and Merlyn Magner’s tragic and redemptive Come into the Water: A Survivor’s Story fits neatly into that category. Magner’s story has been one of our best-ever selling books, and it seemed to capture the mood somewhat of this very wet summer when we released it to coincide with the 39th anniversary of the Rapid City flood of 1972. Such was the magnetism of her prose and her subject that more than 300 people showed up at the Journey Museum in Rapid City to hear her speak.
Memoir also formed the basis of the last book we published this year, Dancing with Colonels: A Young Women’s Adventures in Wartime Turkey. This fascinating book of letters from Marge Enstrom during her time in Washington, D.C., and Ankara, Turkey in World War II, is a wild ride of parties, socializing, intrigue, and so many other “modern” notions. Enstrom wrote her letters with vivid portrayals of day-to-day life in exciting times.
Politics has leapt on to all our radars this year in many forms, particularly now as the race to the White House begins to heat up. But politics isn’t just a contemporary act, and we have published two books that deal with the history of South Dakota’s politics. Al Lee’s Principle over Party details the Populist era, a time when South Dakota was on the cutting edge of national political trends and when the state was instrumental in creating new ideas and political processes that have stood the test of time. The Plains Political Tradition takes a more long-term view of politics in South Dakota, but it is also full of accounts of political machinations of the highest order, often in places and in ways that might surprise.
Finally, we continued our mission to introduce children to important aspects of the region’s history and culture. Over the course of 30+ years, author and illustrator Paul Goble has cemented himself as one of the most important children’s book creators of this region. We’re extremely proud to have published Walking Along this fall. This, Goble’s 40th book, compiles six classic Iktomi stories from the Caldecott Medalist, and the early indications are that we have another winner for young readers!
We’ve produced our first chapbook, Why We Love History, and we’re about to publish our second, First Lady Inagural Gowns, which are both inexpensive, fun, and well-written and well-produced short books. We’re excited about the possibilities that chapbooks offer us to explore various aspects of South Dakota history. We also converted more of our list into ebooks, and have begun to produce ebook shorts of award-winning essays from the 41-year lifespan of South Dakota History, our scholarly journal.
In essence, 2011 has been a continuation of all the good things we’ve done in the past few years, as well as a foray into uncharted, but exciting, waters. We continue to produce award-winning books, and we’re striving to bring good history to light in as many ways as possible. We’re incredibly lucky to work in the book industry, and even if it does seem sometimes as though the book may becoming an endangered species, we happen to believe that reading isn’t going anywhere, and we intend to continue publishing history books that you’ll want to read. So, here’s to a successful 2011 and wishing for an even better 2012.