I don’t like to admit it, but sometimes I take the existence of bookstores for granted.
I’m not saying that I am blasé about bookstores. If you put me in proximity to a store, I’m going inside. But bookstores have been such a part of my life — literally from the beginning, as my mom was one of the co-founders of The Book Bin in Northbrook — I tend to think that the bookstore as an entity is a constant, that as long as there have been books, there have been bookstores.
And given the relatively constant nature of the book, I suppose I assumed the bookstore hasn’t changed all that much over time.
“The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore” by Evan Friss taught me more than a few things about these spaces that I sometimes take for granted.
Structured through a combination of chronology and theme, Friss moves from era to era, starting with Benjamin Franklin’s various shops, which combined publishing, printing and bookselling under one roof. As Friss tells us, the word “bookstore” didn’t even exist, and books were primarily luxury goods. It is clear from the outset that Friss’ research is deep, but he keeps it accessible, frequently flavoring the history with interesting morsels, such as Thomas Jefferson purchasing a “sumptuous two-volume history of Italy” that was the same price as 14 hogs.
From Franklin we move to Boston’s Old Corner bookstore, perhaps the first proper bookstore in the country and a hangout place for writers like Henry Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne. This is an era where bookstores were not just places to buy books, but the main locus of literary culture. Ticknor and Fields, the store’s owners, became influential publishers, including of books like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and The Atlantic magazine, which started from abolitionist roots.
Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company is a prominent player in Friss’ history, as he tells the story of the legendary book section run by Marcella Burns Hahner, known to publishers as “the Czarina” for the influence she held over the entire publishing industry via her oversight of Marshall Field’s book trade between Word War I and World War II. This was another key inflection point in history as the locus of power shifted from the producers and publishers of books to the retailers.
There are chapters on New York’s Gotham Book Mart, on radical bookstores, and also Washington, D.C.’s Drum and Spear bookstore, once the largest Black-owned bookstore in America founded after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to provide a community space, a home for people who wanted to gather and share ideas.
Friss is more wry observer than an opinionated commentator throughout the book, but the arrangement of the final four chapters — Barnes & Noble, Sidewalk, Amazon Books and Parnassus — suggest a battle for the future of bookstores. Barnes & Noble and Amazon, the bricks-and-mortar and online superstores are shown to be marvels of capitalist and technological engineering, rather than places of meaning and culture.
In contrast, are the sidewalk booksellers of New York City, operating in legal gray areas, their wares spread on folding tables that can be packed up in minutes. These sellers operate out of a sense of freedom and belief even in the face of hopeless business prospects. We close with Nashville’s Parnassus, owned by the writer Ann Patchett, which looks like a modern version of The Corner Bookstore, the kind of place readers and writers will flock to in order to be with their clan.
Friss seems to be reminding us that the constants for what makes a bookstore are the people and the books in community with each other.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
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Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “Police” by Jo Nesbo
2. “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning” by Liz Cheney
3. “The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook” by Hampton Sides
4. “Replay” by Ken Grimwood
5. “The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis” by George Stephanopoulos and Lisa Dickey
— Paul F., Plainfield
More nonfiction than fiction, but I’m still going to lean into fiction and a book that combines some mystery and some science fiction, “The 22 Murders of Madison May” by Max Barry.
1. “The Summer Book” by Tove Jansson
2. “Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston and the Beginning of the Civil War” by David Detzer
3. “The Next Step in the Dance” by Tim Gautreaux
4. “The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi” by Boyce Upholt
5. “Strength for the Fight: The Life and Faith of Jackie Robinson” by Gary Scott Smith
— Bill B., Des Plaines
Given Bill’s clear interest in history, I’m going to suggest a kind of companion to “Allegiance” that takes up the story of the Civil War after its conclusion, “Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy” by Ethan Kytle and Blain Roberts.
1. “A Bakery in Paris” by Aimie K. Runyan
2. “The Last List of Mabel Beaumont” by Laura Pearson
3. “The Women” by Kristin Hannah
4. “Finding Margaret Fuller” by Allison Pataki
5. “Listen for the Lie” by Amy Tintera
— Mary Y., Northbrook
I’m hoping that Mary has not yet read Muriel Barbery’s “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” because I think it is a great fit for her interests.
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