Founded in the spring of 1995, Posterity Press issued its first book by year's end. The first year that it entered any competitions, it won two prizes, for its children's book, The Blacksmith's Tale or Once Upon a Flower. The following year PPI won half a dozen citations, including a design prize for Dara, Autobiography of a Chesapeake Bay Retriever, two first place design awards for Off Soundings, Aspects of the Maritime History of Rhode Island, a John Lyman Award from the North American Society for Oceanic History for the same volume and "Best Read of the Year" kudos from the Providence Journal.

One measure of this small independent press's distinction is the attention its books have received both in the literary press and in mass media. PPI was just two years old when its first paperback, Thomas J. Scanlon's Waiting for the Snow, the Peace Corps Papers of a Charter Volunteer, received blue ribbon reviews in The Washington Post, Boston Globe, and foreign affairs journals. PPI author George G. Raymond, the industrialist and author of All in the Family… Business, was interviewed on NPR affiliates. His book, now being used as a text in business schools (where "family business" is an academic specialty) was covered in a dozen periodicals and excerpted in Family Business Magazine. Our recent fiction title, Meade's Reprise, A Novel of Gettysburg, War and Intrigue, which won the literary award of the General Meade Society of Philadelphia, was favorably reviewed in the trade magazine, Publisher's Weekly, and in the academic journal Civil War Book Review. Our charming livestock survey and agrarian history, Shetland Breeds, was endorsed in print by the heads of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy and its British counterpart, the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. It too won a design award as did, Spreading the Risks, which was enthusiastically received by captains of the insurance industry throughout America.

At the outset Posterity Press followed in the great tradition of publishing books for private circulation or informal distribution (e.g. the classic The Education of Henry Adams which was first "privately printed," then appeared in a trade edition and has never been out of print.) PPI's second book, initially intended for private circulation, was so well received that it was put back on press within weeks of its appearance and went on to enjoy modest public sale.

Since then, the majority of our titles have been intended for trade circulation and sale, notwithstanding that they are addressed to small, particular audiences. PPI continues to publish some private books. Still, it bears mention that some private books reach beyond their initial audiences to gain wider circulation and public attention; some may go on to be licensed and reissued by conventional trade or university publishers. Call it "venture publishing."

Whether planned as a "private" or a "public" book, each PPI title is intended to appeal to its own audience. However small a printing may be, our editors, designers and printers pride ourselves on making excellent books in terms of both literary content and physical form. Our private books are edited, designed and printed to the same high standard as our trade books; some of them even to a higher standard such as the elegant volumes printed in letterpress and slipcased.

Posterity Press, Inc., is chaired by Philip Kopper, publisher and chief editorial officer. Educated at Yale and trained as a journalist, he was the founding editor of a distinguished broadcasting magazine, and the director of publications at the National Endowment for the Arts. Mr. Kopper himself is the author of eight books and co-author of several more, which have been published by Times Books; Stewart, Tabori & Chang; Harry N. Abrams, Inc.; the Smithsonian Institution; and National Gallery of Art.