From the Publisher

By Elizabeth P. Valk

When we at TIME decided to issue a collection of Hugh Sidey's essays on U.S. Presidents, there was never a doubt as to who would be the publisher. A 1989 winner while at Harvard of one of our College Achievement Awards, Luke Ives Pontifell is a member of the extended TIME family. He received his prize for founding Thornwillow Press, an enterprise that is dedicated to issuing limited editions of exquisitely designed, hand-printed books. "The goal is to create beautiful, durable books that can carry inspiring events and exciting ideas into the future," says Pontifell, 23. "Today's primary means of communication, like newspapers and television, are effective but ephemeral. We don't want today's ideas to become tomorrow's trash."

Pontifell's philosophy was shaped early. From his mother, a sculptor, he learned a reverence for craftsmanship, and from his father, an advertising creative director, he derived a love for the written word. Growing up in a 200-year-old farmhouse in West Stockbridge, Mass., he made toys and wrote poems in calligraphy.

In his teens Pontifell took a printing course and promptly fell in love. "There's nothing like running your fingers over the letters on a newly printed page," he says. "It enhances the way you experience the words." At age 16 he leased his own letterpress, and Thornwillow was born. His first coup was printing historian William L. Shirer's memoir of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima. Since then Thornwillow has published works by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Helmut Kohl. This week it brings out The Presidency by Hugh Sidey. The book is available through Thornwillow Press in New York City; $300 leather, $75 cloth.

Pontifell and Sidey were delighted by the collaboration. "I had read Hugh's essays for years and leaped at the chance to print them," says Pontifell. For Sidey, meeting Luke recalled his youth as a printer at the Iowa newspaper his great-grandfather founded. "I consider Luke an adopted son," he says. Sidey believes TIME co-founder Henry Luce would also feel an affinity. "Luce complained each week about putting out the magazine, but when he got a copy fresh off the presses, he would lift it, smell it, riffle the pages. For a while, all was well with the world."