The American Book Company (ABC) was an educational book publisher in the United States that specialized in elementary school, secondary school and collegiate-level textbooks.

[1] American Book Company was formed in 1890 by the consolidation of Van Antwerp, Bragg and Co., A.S. Barnes & Co., D. Appleton and Co., and Ivison, Blakeman and Co.[2] It was acquired by Litton Industries in 1967[3] and existed as a division of Litton Educational Publishing, Inc. until being sold to the International Thomson Organization in 1981.

Many of the college level textbook rights of ABC/Litton were sold by International Thomson as well, to Van Nostrand Reinhold, though some[5][6] remained under the Wadsworth imprint at Thomson, which is now Cengage Learning.

[7] Each volume had one or two editors and consisted of "representative selections, with introduction, bibliography, and notes".

[8][9][10][11][12][13] The volume on Benjamin Franklin drew a warm tribute from Carl Van Doren to Frank Luther Mott.