I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review and this is the Book Review

Podcast. Book Review and this is the Book Review podcast.

The American Book Ecosystem is comprised of many different types of publishers.

All these outfits devoted to getting works of fiction and non-fiction out there into the world in front of potential readers.

You have small presses with tiny staffs, publishing up-and-coming authors and

sometimes experimental works. You have academic presses that focus on niche pieces

of non-fiction or sort of books of deep scholarship.

And then you have the big five.

These are the large companies that put out most commercial books in this country.

Most of the well-known or best-selling authors that you hopefully

are familiar with. There's Penguin Random House, Achette, Harper Collins, McMillan, and Simon and Schuster.

That last one, S&S, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year,

and on this week's show, I'm joined by Jonathan Karp,

the CEO and publisher of Simon and

Schuster, to talk about the company's history as well as its future.

John, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

I save the hardest question for first.

You have to pick your favorite book from the century long history of Simon & Schuster.

Oh God.

There are a lot of them. There are a lot of them. I'm just going to

pluck one out right now. The denial of death by Ernest Becker. What a great way

...