[6] In 1938, following the rise of Nazism in Austria and with the Praeger family, as Jews, finding itself under increasing threats, he was briefly imprisoned and then migrated to the United States.

In 1950, using borrowed money, he set up a Frederick A. Praeger Publishing, which would later be named Frederick A. Praeger, Inc. (later renamed Praeger Publishers) and a subsidiary firm, Inter Books, Inc.[3] His early publishing successes included several books by former Communists who had become disillusioned with the cause, including The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System (1957) by the Yugoslav dissident, Milovan Djilas, The Naked God: The Writer and the Communist Party (1957) by Howard Fast, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1963) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

[2] Having moved back to America, he founded the Westview Press in Boulder, Colorado in 1975, which specialised in "scholarly scientific and technical books" printed in inexpensive typewritten formats and issued without dust wrappers.

Praeger's publishing output benefited from the rising college library budgets in the United States from the mid-20th century and in response he published numerous academic titles and book series in the fields of "international relations, Russian and German history, military science and art"[3] that are still held by major libraries.

His seeking out and publishing the writings of Soviet bloc dissidents during the Cold War brought "the realities of Communism to the Western reading public".

R. Bowker Company) for outstanding creative publishing in obtaining and offering the Djilas book The following is a list of some of the principal series; it is not comprehensive.