While his name may not appear on your old schoolbooks, his business dealings ensured his influence reached into classrooms across the nation. The name Robert Maxwell might not immediately ring a bell, but his influence reached into the classrooms of millions of American students. As the father of Jeffrey Epstein’s partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, Robert Maxwell was a media mogul whose publishing empire shaped educational materials in the late 20th century.

Through his ownership of Macmillan Publishing and a joint venture with McGraw-Hill, Maxwell played a significant role in producing the textbooks many children studied from. He is also the main focus in the book: Robert Maxwell, Israel’s Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul by Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon claim Maxwell was involved in espionage, adding a layer of intrigue to his already complex legacy.

Born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch in 1923 in Czechoslovakia, Robert Maxwell’s early life was marked by tragedy. Escaping Nazi persecution, he lost most of his family in the Holocaust and reinvented himself in the United Kingdom, adopting the name Ian Robert Maxwell. A decorated British Army veteran, Maxwell used his wartime connections to enter the publishing world, acquiring a scientific book publisher that he renamed Pergamon Press. This was the foundation of his ascent to becoming a global media baron. By the 1980s, Maxwell’s empire included the British Printing Corporation, Mirror Group Newspapers, and Macmillan Publishers, a major player in educational publishing in the United States. Known for his flamboyant lifestyle—complete with a yacht named “Lady Ghislaine” after his youngest daughter—Maxwell was a larger-than-life figure. However, his business dealings were often controversial, and after his death, allegations of espionage surfaced, most notably in *Robert Maxwell, Israel’s Superspy*, which claims he worked for Israel’s Mossad, facilitated the sale of intelligence-gathering software (PROMIS), and may have been assassinated due to his financial troubles.

Maxwell’s Foray into American Schools
In 1989, Maxwell’s Macmillan Inc. formed a joint venture with McGraw-Hill, creating the Macmillan/McGraw-Hill School Publishing Company. This partnership became the second-largest textbook publisher in the United States, behind only Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, with combined sales of $440 million. The company produced a wide range of elementary, secondary, and vocational education materials used in schools nationwide. For many American students in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the textbooks they studied likely bore the imprint of this Maxwell-McGraw-Hill collaboration. Maxwell’s acquisition of Macmillan Inc. in 1988 for $2.6 billion had positioned him as a key player in the U.S. publishing market, and the McGraw-Hill partnership expanded his influence.

After Maxwell’s mysterious death in 1991, speculation about his life intensified. The book “Robert Maxwell, Israel’s Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul” by Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, published in 2002, alleges that Maxwell was a Mossad operative, involved in high-stakes intelligence operations. The authors claim he facilitated the distribution of PROMIS software, modified to include a backdoor for espionage, to various governments.

His role in publishing textbooks used by millions of American students is a lesser-known chapter in history. For those who grew up reading Macmillan or McGraw-Hill textbooks, the revelation that Ghislaine Maxwell’s father was behind their production and that he may have been entangled in international espionage adds a surprising twist to a seemingly mundane part of childhood.