Berkshire Publishing Group specializes in international relations, cross-cultural communication, global business and economic information, and environmental sustainability. Berkshire was founded in 1998 as a specialist academic book development company, and worked with major U.S. and U.K. publishers to develop global reference titles that were published under the Routledge, Sage, Scribners, Macmillan, and other imprints. At the end of 2004, Berkshire began releasing its own titles, beginning with the 5-volume Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History (McNeill et al.). Berkshire is small and independent. While there's been massive consolidation in the publishing industry in recent years, Berkshire is bucking the trend, as an independent imprint that intends to stay that way. We share the belief of many of our customers, readers, and other friends and fans: independent voices are needed more than ever. The company’s headquarters are in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, a town of 7,700 people located in the southern Berkshire Hills. W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) grew up in Great Barrington and his global thinking and activism inspires Berkshire Publishing today. Before founding Berkshire, Karen Christensen had a brief publishing career in London, where she worked on scientific journals at Blackwell Science and also on the T. S. Eliot’s Letters at Faber & Faber. She is an environmental author as well as a publisher, with books translated into many languages including Chinese.