Tom Spence '83: Vox Clamantis

by Matthew Tokson

Founded in 1996, Dallas-based Spence Publishing has elicited praise from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, Time, the Washington Times, and Publishers Weekly. It has also elicited vitriolic criticism from certain censorious left-wingers. One letter received from a state university bookstore read:

I wish to be REMOVED from your mailing list. I find some of your titles to be offensive and out right simple minded (sic). I will not sell your titles in any of my stores so please do not promote the ridiculous books to me!

Another from a bookstore in Berkeley, California, stated ironically:

Please take me off your mailing list. We do NOT sell fascist publications. Thank you.

Or, from the book review editor of the Indianapolis Star:

Please take me off your contact list. If you want to reach a narrow-minded audience, try the small town rags.

Why all the hostility? Spence Publishing specializes in publishing controversial books such as David Horowitz’s Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes and Domestic Tranquility: A Brief Against Feminism by F. Carolyn Graglia that many on the left find offensive. But, as founder Thomas Spence ’83 tells the Review, Spence Publishing’s books have elicited criticism from people of all political affiliations. "The book I’m proudest to have published is called The American Myth of Religious Freedom by Kenneth Craycraft, Jr., which is a very contrarian look at the First Amendment and religious freedom in America," says Spence. "Ken’s book has powerfully annoyed a lot of conservatives, and I take that as a good sign."

Spence envisions his company as a catalyst for informed debate among social, cultural, and political thinkers. "We are looking for books on social or cultural topics…that have been neglected," he says. He cites There’s No Place Like Work by Brian Robinson as an example. "There are, as you know if you follow the Wall Street Journal for a week, a million books on balancing work and family," says Spence. "But it’s the only book, at least that I’m aware of, that says that looking for a way to balance work and family is the wrong question altogether and just asking that question…shows that we’re thinking about work and family in the wrong way."

In his book, Robinson analyzes how conceptions of the work/family balance have changed dramatically in the last 15 years. He reexamines the early feminist movement and its campaign for a "family wage" so that women would not be forced out of the home to work. "Those are the kind of books we’re looking for," Spence tells the Review. "Our favorite kind of book is one that will be just as readable and relevant ten years from now as it is today. I don’t know if all of our titles live up to that, but, for the most part, they’re issues of enduring importance."

These issues range from the judicial usurpation of the political process to the rise of horror in novels and film. Indeed, Spence’s favorite Spence book is Carson Hollway’s All Shook Up: Music, Passion, and Politics, a look at societal conceptions of popular music from Plato to the present day.

Spence, as the founder of Spence Publishing, sets the editorial and philosophical course for the company. Spence earned his undergraduate degree at Dartmouth, graduating in 1983. "Dartmouth had a huge effect on me in every way," Spence reports. "I had gone to high school in a pretty mediocre public high school in a small town in Texas and Dartmouth was an incredible intellectual awakening for me." He became interested in Medieval and Renaissance history, gaining his "first real acquaintance with the Western tradition in a serious way." Dartmouth also had an impact on his political philosophy. He arrived on campus a "wet-behind-the-ears, standard-issue Republican." He took several courses with Government professor Vincent Starzinger. "Professor Starzinger introduced me to the conservative tradition going back to Burke," says Spence. "That had a big effect on my political views. I became more of a Tory or perhaps a Burkian."

He also became more involved with religion while at Dartmouth and converted to Catholicism soon after graduation. "[Catholicism] affected the way I saw things and gave me an interest in cultural issues rather than economic and public policy issues," Spence told the Review. "I’m an economic conservative too, but the cultural or social realm is where my passion is and where I want to make a contribution."

Overall, Spence affirms that he "had a wonderful experience at Dartmouth, as plagued as it was by all the silliness that still plagues it."

He began his career as a lawyer in Boston. After a few years, he left for Harvard to pursue a Ph.D. in Medieval History. After four years, he began to feel as though he were "languishing in dissertation land. I began to see that the career prospects in academia, particularly for a white male, are pretty bleak."

He returned to Texas, his home state, in 1994 to work at his father’s recently opened book publishing company. The company focused on motivational stories and consumer health books. After two years, Spence got together with Princeton-graduate Mitch Muncey, now Spence Publishing’s editor-in-chief. In 1996, they established Spence Publishing, opening a 9,000-square-foot office in a Dallas industrial area. "Mitch was already living in Dallas," says Spence. "We thought about moving to Boston but decided that with something as risky as getting into book publishing it would make more sense to stay closer to home."

Since then, Spence Publishing has carved out a niche for itself as a publisher of scholarly books by conservative and libertarian intellectuals. According to Spence, these books were increasingly being abandoned as publishing companies like Basic Books and the Free Press became increasingly liberal in their editorial focus.

First printings of Spence books average 3,000-5,000 copies, most of which are bought by chain bookstores. The company’s biggest bestseller has been Horowitz’s Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes, which sold over 50,000 copies, largely because of the controversy surrounding Horowitz’s views on reparations for slavery. The company currently has over thirty books in print and generally publishes eight new titles per year.

For the future, Spence Publishing is looking to attract more moderate left-wing readers and authors. "We’re in the middle of a major reworking of our publicity program," says Spence. "We think there is an audience for our books on the reasonable left, kind of the New Republic left."

Spence Publishing will publish a book on euthanasia next year by Wesley Smith, whom Thomas Spence describes as "basically a Naderite."

"Actually, he’s the kind of writer that we are particularly looking for," says Spence. "[Smith] is thoughtful and has something to say that’s not the standard conservative argument that you’ve heard a hundred times over and that has something that conservatives ought to hear, as well as liberals."

Smith, approaching the issues of euthanasia and abortion from a left-wing standpoint, concludes that they constitute a serious threat to American moral values. "Starting from a very different place than I start from…Smith’s come to the conclusion that some terrible things happening in this country, and a lot more on the horizon," Spence says.

A new book by David Horowitz is also slated for release next year. Also upcoming for Spence is a book by former National Review literary editor Brad Minor. The book will focus on chivalry and the idea of the gentleman in the modern era, with the working title The Complete Gentleman: Courtly Love in the Age of Courtney Love.

Thomas Spence looks forward to 2002, to continued success and, no doubt, continued controversy. "[Criticism] comes in waves whenever a catalog comes out," says a bemused Spence. "I recently got [another] note from a bookstore somewhere in California that...was rather frosty." He says that the rejections and angry letters his company receives don’t really affect business, and generate "office amusement" rather than distress.

"I must say I’ve been a little bit surprised about how shameless book buyers or publicity contacts who are of left-leaning opinion are in telling us to just go to hell," reports Spence. "They’re not content to just leave us alone and throw our press release in the trash. They’ve got to single us out." Yet Spence, Mitchell Muncy, and Spence Publishing remain undeterred in their mission to reach a wide audience of thinkers of all political affiliations. "Sometimes we send a catalog or a press release to people and it gets thrown back in our face and they don’t want to hear about it," says Spence. "But we’re not giving up."