Short answers, pulled from the story.
Beacon Press traces its history to the American Unitarian Association, formed in 1825, and began publishing as the Press of the American Unitarian Association in 1854. It is now a department of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
In 1971, Beacon Press published the Senator Gravel edition of The Pentagon Papers, the first time the papers appeared in book form. Robert West, then president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, approved the decision, which he said brought two and a half years of harassment from the Nixon administration.
In Gravel v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause protected Senator Gravel and some acts of his aide, but not Beacon Press. The ruling left the press itself unprotected despite its role in publishing the material.
Beacon Press is known for publishing James Baldwin, Mary Oliver, Martin Luther King Jr., and Viktor Frankl, among others. Under director Gobin Stair from 1962 to 1975, new authors added to the list included Kenneth Clark, Herbert Marcuse, Jurgen Habermas, Howard Zinn, and Mary Daly.
The King Legacy is a book series Beacon Press launched in 2009 through a partnership with the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. It reprints King's previously published titles and compiles his writings, sermons, orations, lectures, and prayers into new editions with introductions by leading scholars.
Beacon Press won a New England Book Award for publishing in 1992. In 1993 the Literary Market Place voted Beacon Trade Publisher of the Year.