James F. Leisy; Leading Textbook Publisher

James F. Leisy, 62, one of America’s leading textbook publishers and the founder, in 1956, of the Wadsworth Publishing Co. Leisy graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1949 and went to work for the publisher Prentice-Hall Inc. When the 1957 launching of the Soviet space satellite Sputnik created a wave of American concern about the country’s educational pre-eminence and a new seriousness about textbooks, Leisy’s young, San Francisco-based publishing company took the wave at its crest. As president and chairman of Wadsworth, Leisy became a deputy chairman and director of the International Thomson Organization, the British publishing giant, when Thomson acquired Wadsworth in 1978. He was a member of the Young Presidents Organization and the World Business Council and a director of the Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurial Development at UC Santa Cruz. In 1988, the Assn. of American Publishers presented Leisy with its first Higher Education Achievement Award. In Stanford University Hospital on July 8 of lung cancer.