The Gibbs Smith Education division produces social studies textbooks and digital materials for schools.
[4] Smith used $12,000 earned from working on the film version of his master's dissertation on labor activist Joe Hill to finance his publishing venture, after receiving words of encouragement from publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Sr.[5] By 1973, the company had moved to a barn built in 1916 in East Layton, Utah.
[4] As of the late 1990s, it was a considered a mid-sized publisher, received about 100 manuscript submissions each week, and brought about 60 new books to market each year.
[8] The company was also involved in nature and wilderness books, and Smith served as president of the Utah chapter of the Sierra Club in the late 1980s.
[12] School district staff maintained that any harm from the characterization of the Second Amendment—as based on a right to use guns for hunting and other legal purposes—was minimal, as the information on the federal Constitution was supplementary to the textbook's core focus on state history and civics and because the text was necessarily diluted because of its mixed audience of seventh through ninth grade students.