NEW YORK — Jeremy P. Tarcher, who four decades ago founded the publishing house that bears his name, specializing in nonfiction books on health, psychology, and New Age spirituality, died Sept. 20 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 83.
The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, his companion, Harriet Stuart, said.
Founded in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, the house, known early on as J.P. Tarcher, is today part of the Tarcher Perigee imprint of Penguin Random House, based in New York. Mr. Tarcher remained with the company until 1996.
Over the years, Mr. Tarcher published many bestsellers, among them “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” (1979), by Betty Edwards, which marries neuroscience and art instruction; the advice book “Women Who Love Too Much” (1985), by Robin Norwood; and “The Faith of George W. Bush” (2003), by Stephen Mansfield.
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Another bestseller, “Seven Years in Tibet,” a memoir by the Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, originally published in German in 1952 and issued by Mr. Tarcher in 1982, in 1997 became a feature film starring Brad Pitt.
Jeremy Phillip Tarcher was born on Jan. 2, 1932, in New York. His father, Jack, ran his own advertising agency and was later a vice president of the Madison Avenue powerhouse Doyle Dane Bernbach.
His mother, the former Mary Brager, was a criminal lawyer who became an executive of the Legal Aid Society. His sister Judith grew up to become the best-selling novelist Judith Krantz. (Her novels are issued by the Crown Publishing Group.)
After graduating from the Horace Mann School in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, Mr. Tarcher earned a bachelor’s degree from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Md. During the Korean War he was stationed with the Army in Paris. He later studied Eastern philosophy in India before settling in Los Angeles.
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Mr. Tarcher married the television puppeteer and children’s author Shari Lewis in 1958 and went on to publish some of her books, including “The Kids-Only Club Book” (1976). He and Lewis also collaborated on the script for “The Lights of Zetar,” an episode of “Star Trek” first broadcast in 1969, in which the crew of the Enterprise is overtaken by a malign alien storm.
Lewis died at 65 in 1998. His second wife, whom Mr. Tarcher’s family declined to name, also died before him. Besides his companion, Stuart, and his sister, Krantz, Mr. Tarcher leaves a daughter from his first marriage, Mallory, who uses the surname Lewis in tribute to her mother; and a grandson.
Mr. Tarcher’s other well-known books include “The Aquarian Conspiracy” (1980), a guide to New Age consciousness raising by Marilyn Ferguson; “Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class” (1978), by Bikram Choudhury, with Bonnie Jones Reynolds; “Quitting the Nairobi Trio” (2000), a memoir of mental illness by Jim Knipfel; and “The United States of Wal-Mart” (2005), an exploration of the giant retailer by John Dicker.