They were a United States publishing company located in San Francisco, California with a concentration on biological conservation.

[6] Fifty thousand copies were sold in the first four years,[7] and by 1964 sales exceeded 10,000,000 United States dollars.

During Beckmann's tenure the program expanded and diversified considerably, publishing books by established and emerging writers such as Wendell Berry, Robert Bly, Galen Rowell, and David Rains Wallace as well as field guides, fiction, poetry, and books on environmental activism, such as the Sierra Club Battlebooks.

[11] Many Sierra Club books were produced by the Yolla Bolly Press run by Jim and Carolyn Robertson in Covelo, California.

[10] The program continued for two decades after 1994, first under Peter Beren, the former marketing director,[12] then under Helen Sweetland, the former children's books editor.