Regnery Publishing

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Regnery Publishing is a publishing house based in Washington DC that is the (self-proclaimed) "nation’s preeminent conservative publisher." They "publish[...] books that are contrary to those of 'mainstream' publishers in New York" by such conservative luminaries as "Dinesh D'Souza, Armstrong Williams, Oliver North, Mark Steyn, and Steve Forbes."[1] One wonders why they left out Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Ted Nugent, and Peter Duesberg (yes, really).

Regnery was founded in the 1940s by Henry Regnery, who started his publishing career distributing the conservative newsletter Human Events. While they got involved in extreme wingnuttery by printing Bircher books, they also published a few works by socialists and Sybil, the famous book on split-personality (now dissociative) disorder. They helped launch William F. Buckley's career by publishing his first two books.

Gallery of bullshit[edit]

Currently, Regnery seems to be a clearinghouse for the bullshit no other publisher would ever touch. Some of their greatest hits include:

Along with these, they offer a variety of books on fundamentalism, creationism, and Biblical pseudoarchaeology. A number of books by Newt Gingrich and Mark Skousen, the nephew of W. Cleon Skousen, are available. There is also some rather uncharacteristic woo as well, including a bunch of books on food woo, diet woo, and general quackery. And for some reason, you can still order books on Y2K.

Politically Incorrect Guides[edit]

Regnery publishes a series of books called the Politically Incorrect Guides or P.I.G.s, which are largely written to resemble the successful …for Dummies series from Wiley and Complete Idiot's Guide from Alpha Books. They are written primarily by right-wing hacks such as Tom Bethell and Jonathan Wells; it is generally agreed outside the wingnut world that they are both political (being heavily biased towards dogmatic conservatism) and incorrect (both scientifically and historically). The evolution blog Panda's Thumb initiated a series meant to be a point-by-point fisking of the PIG to Intelligent Design by noted ID advocate and would-be scientist Jonathan Wells; due to the sheer volume of stupid in that one book alone, the series never quite finished.[note 2]

Earlier editions ran with the tagline "Liberals have hijacked [insert topic here] for long enough. Now it's our turn." That last sentence was later changed to "It's time to set the record straight."

Educators may wish to get copies of the appropriate P.I.Gs to prepare themselves for misinformed students who have been indoctrinated with these books. (Yes, they are popular with parents in the home schooling movement.) At least one book from the list below[note 3] is actively recommended to Christian school and college students who want to argue back against atheist teachers.[2]

According to Regnery's website, the following Politically Incorrect Guides are available:

External links[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. Which is funny, given that Obama was responsible for the downfall of terror masterminds Osama bin Laden, Muammar al-Gaddafi, and many others.
  2. In fact, it seems to be ongoing. After nearly sputtering to a stop in 2010, two new titles about the British Empire (they're fans of it — their ancestors must have been Tories) and socialism were added in 2011.
  3. The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible
  4. The exclamation point is part of the tag line. It isn't added as commentary, although it could be considering that the book was written by an American. You know, those guys who were the first to fight against British colonialism.

References[edit]

  1. From the publisher
  2. How to Shut Up an Atheist from Townhall.com (surprise, surprise...)
  3. The Original Culture War, a review by Peter Bacon in the Harvard Political Review, March 4, 2009
  4. Whistling Dixie, a review by Matthew J. Franck in the Claremont Review of Books, Vol. VIII , Number 1 - Winter 2007/08
  5. Review by John F. Marszalek
  6. Review by Chris Mooney and further commentary
  7. Review by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
  8. Review by David Greenburg
  9. Mainly Incorrect, a review by John B. Kienker in the Claremont Review of Books, Vol. V, Number 2 - Spring 2005