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An affectionate and engaging history of the American bookstore and its central place in American cultural life, from department stores to indies, from highbrow dealers trading in first editions to sidewalk vendors, and from chains to special-interest community destinations.
There’s just something about a bookshop.
The sights and smells, the books and the browsing, the buildings themselves that are imbued with as much character as the people who work in and frequent them.
In The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore, author Evan Friss shines a lyrical spotlight on the bookshop, in all its iterations, through its evolution in American history. His book is a well-researched study of the bookshop as an American cultural institution.
Beginning with early spots like Ben Franklin’s printing shop (before the word “bookstore” even came into existence) to haunts in more modern times, the bookshop has captivated legions of bibliophiles. Whether a bookshop on wheels or a vast book section inside a mammoth department store, the bookshop – in all its forms -- has a glorified place in America’s own story. Friss introduces us to many of the places that are legend in bookselling history while charting the American bookshop’s nascent days in colonial times to its zenith in pre-Amazon America – and the bookshop’s decline as the Internet has made book buying a far less personal and much more distant and transactional event.
Not just about the shops themselves, though, The Bookshop also pays homage to some of the greats in the bookselling industry, from small purveyors of books whose shops were opened on ambition and a prayer (and often very little money) to the seemingly larger than life booksellers whose personal recommendations could make or break an author’s career.
The Bookshop takes us back in time and leaves one (at least, this one) with a sense of admiration for those who were able to accomplish so much.
It also leaves this reader with a sense of loss in being able to only experience some of the places mentioned vicariously through Friss’ writing…and concern about the future of bookshops in our increasingly digital world.
The Bookshop itself is worthy of shelf space in one’s bookshop of choice (and, of course, this library).
Those with an affinity for books will enjoy and appreciate this one. - Katina, Area Librarian