A country is its stories. We publish them carefully.

The Bay Path was a colonial trail cut through the woods of western Massachusetts in the 1670s, connecting Boston to the settlements along the Connecticut River. It ran past militia musters, through towns that would raise soldiers for every American war, and over ground that would later hold the homes of Jonathan Edwards, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Norman Rockwell's studio.

A road, in other words, that a country walked on before it was a country — and kept walking on afterward. We thought it a fair name for a press.

Bay Path Press publishes narrative history, essays, and cultural criticism for general readers. We are small on purpose, and slow on purpose, and opinionated about craft. Our books are edited hard. Our authors are paid decently and named on the title page in a type size that flatters them.

We believe the American story is worth telling — all of it — by writers who neither flinch from its failures nor sneer at its aspirations. If that makes us old-fashioned, we can live with that.