The Brookings Institution and its scholars are known worldwide as a source for original and innovative thought  in foreign policy, American politics and governance, current affairs, metropolitan policy, economics, and development. In turn, the Brookings Institution Press helps bring the knowledge and research by scholars from within and outside the Institution to a wider audience of readers, researchers, students, and policymakers through  its books and journals. The Press publishes about forty books a year  that harness the power of fact and rigorous research to start conversations, inform debates, change minds, and move policy.

Publishing has been an integral facet of the Brookings Institution mission since its founding in 1916. The Brookings Institution Press grew from its beginning as an outlet for institutional research to a full-fledged scholarly press publishing an impressive variety of peer-reviewed titles,  and by 1958 it had joined the Association of American University Presses.

In recent years, the Press has published such exciting, successful titles as Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That is a Problem, and What to Do About It by Richard V. Reeves, Diversity Explosion: How the New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America by William H. Frey, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin by Clifford Gaddy and Fiona Hill, and Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympic and the World Cup by Andrew Zimbalist—in other words, books that address real-world issues and get people talking.

The Brookings Institution Press publishes books that are widely discussed in the media, assigned in classrooms, referred to in libraries, and picked up in bookstores—books that inform with clarity and persuade with conviction.