Phaidon’s empire of world-renowned books on food, architecture, fashion, design and travel complement the publisher’s beginnings. Named after Socrates’s pupil Phaedo, who was known for his discourses on immortality, this London-based publishing house got its start in 1923 as a producer of high quality, reasonably priced literature, philosophy, and history books. In 1936 it added art to its repertoire, publishing some of the first monographs of Van Gogh and Botticelli. All volumes pair erudite text with breathtaking photography; a perennial favorite is Phaidon’s stunning, large-scale Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture.