Polytropos Press

Reading Matter for the Versatile Mind

Polytropos: so Homer called Odysseus, that world wanderer who “knew many cities and the minds of many men.” The word means "of many turns”—versatile, in other words, and capable of maneuvering through the waves of a stormy sea or the nuances of an argument.

Our publications bring cities—and deep wildernesses, and orders of nature, and distant planets, and other minds—before the reader in a great conversation that flows like a river into the endless ocean. We invite you to take part in it, and, if it's not mixing a metaphor too dreadfully, to enjoy the swim.

The world, Stéphane Mallarmé tells us, exists in order to be turned into a book. Polytropos Press is directed by Gregory McNamee, working project by project with writers, photographers, designers, artists, producers, typographers, and other book people to achieve that transformation.