Short answers, pulled from the story.
Free Press was founded by Jeremiah Kaplan and Charles Liebman in 1947. The house was based in Glencoe, Illinois, and its first three titles were works by Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Bertrand Russell.
Kaplan and Liebman chose the name because they wanted to publish books devoted to civil liberties. The name was a direct statement of that editorial commitment from the very first season.
Simon & Schuster acquired Macmillan, and with it Free Press, in 1994. The imprint was later merged into Simon & Schuster's flagship list in 2012.
Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 under publisher Ed Barry. Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire won the National Book Award in nonfiction in 2003, and Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger won the Man Booker Prize in 2008.
Macmillan purchased Free Press in 1960 for $1.3 million. Of that total, $500,000 went to co-founder Jeremiah Kaplan and $800,000 went to Charles Liebman.
Under editors Erwin Glikes and Adam Bellow from 1983 onward, Free Press published several controversial conservative titles. These included The Tempting of America by Robert Bork, The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom, Illiberal Education by Dinesh D'Souza, The Real Anita Hill by David Brock, and The Bell Curve by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein.