Book excerpt: This book is a rather personal history of an academic publishing house I chose to call 'Three Acorns Press' in the narrative. I did this to protect nearly 500 authors and the publishing house itself. Not that what I had to say was scandalous or problematic, but rather I wanted to keep personalities out of this story. It is not an autobiographical study of the author, per se, and it is hopefully not the end of the publishing house which has over one hundred and twenty-five titles in print. My personal history is somewhat more complicated and the story of this publishing house has not yet ended. The following is, however, my own recollections of how I began this publishing house and how and why it has grown to be a house of reputation - the winner of the American Library Association Academic Book of the Year award and cited three times by the Ford Foundation and the National Research Council as a leader in the field. I did not set out from school to be a publisher. Though I have always been a lover of books, I never dreamed of actually publishing them. But, a publisher is what I am and this is my story of how it all came about.