U.S. publishing company.
It was founded in 1924 by Richard L. Simon (1899–1960) and M. Lincoln Schuster (1897–1970), whose initial project, the original crossword-puzzle book, was a best-seller. Among their other innovations was Pocket Books, the first U.S. paperback line, launched in 1939. The company came to publish a wide variety of books, including many best-sellers and prizewinners. In 1975 it was sold to Gulf & Western Inc. , which, renamed Paramount Communications in 1989, was acquired by Viacom Inc. in 1994. With the 1998 sale of its educational, professional, international, and reference divisions, Simon & Schuster concentrated again on fiction and nonfiction for the general reader.