Regnery
Regnery Publishing is an American publisher of conservative books. In December 2023, Regnery was acquired from Salem Media Group by Skyhorse Publishing; it continued to exist as an imprint with its own identity.
What you can find
The website features a catalog of political books, history books, children’s books and fiction, as well as author pages and news.
Why it is included on this list
In 2020, Regnery published Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier. The book describes the rise in teenage girls identifying as transgender and builds on the hypothesis of rapid-onset gender dysphoria. The Economist named it one of the books of the year; at the same time, it has been heavily criticized for the weak scientific basis of that hypothesis. The book’s page is still available on the publisher’s website. See also young people.
History of the publisher
Henry Regnery founded the publishing house in Chicago in 1947; it is now based in Washington. In its early years, it published books that became influential in American conservatism, including God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1951 and The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk in 1953. In 1993, Regnery became part of Eagle Publishing, and in January 2014 it joined Salem, before being acquired by Skyhorse at the end of 2023. Its authors include politicians and commentators such as Ted Cruz, Newt Gingrich, Josh Hawley, Mike Pence, Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter. The publishing house has imprints for history and children’s books.
The Irreversible Damage book page
According to the book page, the book was published in June 2020. It is available as a hardcover, paperback and e-book. The publisher describes it as an investigation into the rapid rise of gender dysphoria among teenage girls, based on conversations with girls, parents, doctors and detransitioners. According to that description, Shrier argues that social contagion and activists’ messaging lead to unnecessary medical interventions. In addition to The Economist, the page states that The Times and The Sunday Times included the book among their best books of 2021. It features recommendations from, among others, psychologist Kenneth Zucker, radio host Dennis Prager and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali. A review of the book can be found in the archive entry on Irreversible Damage and on transgemeenschap.nl. More about the author can be found under Abigail Shrier.
How to assess this source
A publisher’s book page is advertising: it highlights praise and leaves out criticism. Regnery is also a publisher with a political profile, not an academic publisher. At a trade publisher, peer review of the kind practiced by a university press is not standard. That does not make the book unusable, but it is advocacy journalism, not research. In July 2021, a coalition of professional psychology associations, including the American Psychological Association, stated that no sound empirical studies on rapid-onset gender dysphoria exist. Background on the young people who reconsidered their transition after appearing in the book can be found under detransition.