Dunwoody Press

[Φιλόσοφος]

As we had discussed in the old forum, this company seemed to go out of business at the end of last year. They published what is perhaps the most valuable type of materials: intermediate and advanced textbooks for less-studied languages. Upon news of their demise I scrambled and managed to obtain some of what I wanted, though much regrettably, mostly without the audio.

I have noticed however that lately two separate sellers have listed for sale most titles of the catalog such as this or this one brand new at Amazon. Could it be they are unloading the remaining inventory, or is there hope that they are being reprinted? There are some further five or six manuals I would like to own, however they are expensive, and Dunwoody Press previously used to include the audio recordings with the books, whereas now they are sold without them.

Any member has had further information or dealings with Dunwoody Press?

[galaxyrocker]

I hope they're returning to printing. I just found out about them after their closure, but it seems like they had a lot of great resources. I wish there was someway to browse their catalog still, so I knew exactly what to look for on Amazon or whatnot.

[Φιλόσοφος]

There is. Go to WorldCat.org, then type "Dunwoody" followed by the name of the language you are interested in.

[zenmonkey]

Part of their catalog is visible at https://openlibrary.org/publishers/Dunwoody_Press

I always found them to be prohibitively expensive.

By the way - Dunwoody Press was bought by McNeil Technologies in '99. It was an security and intelligence services agency. It was in turn bought by AECOM (2010), which itself merged with URS. Publishing readers of rare languages doesn't really seem to be part of their core business.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/64460

[Φιλόσοφος]

Zenmonkey, it's sad to hear. Nothing is going to survive a profit driven world.

Businesses have always needed to be sustainable. What has changed is that profitable no longer means materials of substance but digital and gimmicky products.

[Φιλόσοφος]

The real problem is the artificial growth fetish which is taken to be truth by today's economists and everyone who follows it. That's not sustainable.

Economic growth dates back to 17th century Netherlands. I believe we are only beginning to realize what is possible. The danger lies not in economics or technology, but in the subversion of the ideological and subjective basis for material progress.

Regarding language-learning materials, I do believe the digital fetish does make rich and rewarding materials such as those produced more frequently in the past struggle in the marketplace. Digital is the bane of all culture, as it makes it disposable, fleeting and not worthwhile.