University Press of Kansas marks America’s 250th with history book sales

Half-price history books are now part of University Press of Kansas’s bid to turn America’s 250th anniversary into more than a commemoration. From its headquarters at 2502 Westbrooke Circle on the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence, the press is rolling out weekly themed sales that will feature about 15 to 30 books at a time, with selected titles marked down 50%.

The first sale spotlights the American West, with books on westward expansion, frontier life, Indigenous experiences, environmental change and the West’s place in U.S. history and culture. The press says the America 250 promotion will keep shifting themes each week through the coming months, with additional collections built around the American presidency and other areas of the catalog.

That catalog is large enough to support the push. UPK says it has published more than 2,000 titles and has spent 80 years building a reputation in U.S. history, histories of the American presidency, political science, military history, legal studies and Kansas and regional history. The press marked its 80th anniversary in March and says it was established in 1946.

For Lawrence, the campaign is a reminder that one of the region’s flagship academic publishers is still trying to connect scholarly work with general readers. UPK’s America 250 pages frame the sale as a way to bring people into books written by experts and reviewed by peers at a time when readers are sorting through misinformation and AI-generated content online.

The effort also fits into a broader Kansas-wide push around the nation’s semiquincentennial. Kansas 250 is being led by the Kansas 250 Commission, and the State Library of Kansas has launched the Kansas 250 Bookshelf as part of the state’s America 250 programming. UPK’s promotional pages include titles tied to the American Revolution and early republic, the American West and Midwest, Indigenous studies, law, military studies, presidential studies and American history.

The press’s current push is built around a simple idea: history books can still sell, and Lawrence can still play a visible role in how the country marks 250 years. By pairing weekly discounts with a deep backlist of scholarly titles, UPK is trying to turn a national milestone into new readers, stronger attention and a wider audience for a local institution that has spent decades publishing for Kansas and beyond.