From the 1950s to the 1970s, Random House had huge success with their Landmark Books series, which ended up with a total of 185 titles. They also did quite well with another series for a younger age group, called the Step Up books; these non-fiction books attractively combined history and science in a single collection. Over time, however, many of the books from both series went out of print and (at least so far) have never been brought back.
But not all. Random House kept reprinting about a dozen of the Landmark books (several with small tweaks), and a few of the Step-Up books—with titles like Meet Abraham Lincoln and Meet Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the early 2000s, Random House tried to revive the Landmark series. They took the titles still in print, combined them with the Step Up books still available, and from 2001-2005 published eleven new titles (that we know of) with the rebranded logo. Most of these titles cover topics not found in the original series—like the Leif Erickson expedition, or the history of terrorism, or the reverse: the pacifists of American history. And there is an element of early DEI: this second series adds more titles dealing specifically with women and minorities, specifically one on the civil rights movement and biographies of black women Maya Angelou and Aunt Clara Brown.
So these are labeled Landmark, but not reprints of the original series. Some are Step Up reprints, but most are titles previously unknown. We're not sure exactly what happened, but we do know these didn't take off like the earlier books. We think physical copies of these are generally pretty scarce, but fortunately all the newer titles can be found online to read.
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