About

Punch Up Press is a small independent publisher. It exists to put out books that are well sourced, carefully argued, and inconvenient enough that a larger house would want them softened first.

The name is not subtle. Punching up means aiming at whoever holds more power in the room. The agency, the committee, the professional body, the funder. It does not mean contrarianism for its own sake, and it does not assume that every consensus is a conspiracy. Most consensus is simply correct. The interesting cases are the small number where it is not, and where the machinery for noticing has been quietly switched off.

The standard

Every book and article published here has to clear the same bar.

The paperwork comes before the summary. If a claim rests on what an institution did, the reader should be able to see the memo, the minutes, or the email.

Citations resolve. A footnote that cannot be followed is decoration.

The other side gets its strongest version. An argument that only beats a weak opponent has not been tested.

Corrections stay visible. When something published here turns out to be wrong, it gets fixed on the page, dated, and left there.

Ryan Jones

Ryan Jones is a writer and researcher with a background in public administration. His first book, The Normal Thing to Be, traces how routine infant circumcision was rebuilt as global health policy, drawing on new interviews, Freedom of Information requests, and public documents that had gone largely unread.

He is at work on the next book. The list will not stay non-fiction.