Jack Rittenhouse

The first biography of Jack D. Rittenhouse, the pioneering twentieth-century writer, printer, publisher, Western historian, antiquarian bookman, advertising executive, and chronicler of the golden age of Route 66. Jack Rittenhouse was a multi-dimensional individual for whom books were a way of life. He helped establish and elevate printing arts, writing, editing, and publishing in the emerging field of Western history. A founding member of the Western History Association, he is recognized annually by the Independent Book Publishers Association with their Jack Rittenhouse Award, “given in memory of the West’s legendary bookman.” Dropping out of college amid the Depression for lack of funds, Rittenhouse rode the rails to New York, where he picked up a job in the mail room at Alfred A. Knopf. At Knopf he would open all the incoming correspondence before delivering it to the offices upstairs, and in the evenings he would make notes on what he had learned about book publishing from reading the morning mail, which included correspondence from Willa Cather, H. L. Mencken, and many others. When he learned he could not advance in the publishing world without a college degree, he entered the advertising business and ultimately became a senior partner at a major firm. He collected books, vintage type, and printing presses and read widely on the history of the American West. Early in his career Jack quietly started his own bookselling business on the side. In 1946 he launched his own award-winning publishing venture, Stagecoach Press, with A Guide Book to Highway 66 and soon became known as an authority on The Main Street of America. Subsequently, he printed and published fifty Stagecoach Press books over the next twenty-one years. Jack Rittenhouse tells the story of a man recognized for his knowledge, scholarship, and devotion to the history of the West and to the books that brought it to life.