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The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Goodreads Choice Award Winner in History & Biography
One of Time’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2024
"A spirited defense of this important, odd and odds-defying American retail category." —The New York Times
"It is a delight to wander through the bookstores of American history in this warm, generous book." —Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author and owner of Books Are Magic
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
Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In The Bookshop, we see the stakes: what has been, and what might be lost.
Evan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin’s first bookstore in Philadelphia and takes us to a range of booksellers including the Strand, Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company, the Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus. The Bookshop is also a history of the leading figures in American bookselling, often impassioned eccentrics, and a history of how books have been marketed and sold over the course of more than two centuries—including, for example, a 3,000-pound elephant who signed books at Marshall Field’s in 1944.
The Bookshop is a love letter to bookstores, a charming chronicle for anyone who cherishes these sanctuaries of literature, and essential reading to understand how these vital institutions have shaped American life—and why we still need them.
Goodreads Choice Award Winner in History & Biography
One of Time’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2024
"A spirited defense of this important, odd and odds-defying American retail category." —The New York Times
"It is a delight to wander through the bookstores of American history in this warm, generous book." —Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author and owner of Books Are Magic
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
Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In The Bookshop, we see the stakes: what has been, and what might be lost.
Evan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin’s first bookstore in Philadelphia and takes us to a range of booksellers including the Strand, Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company, the Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus. The Bookshop is also a history of the leading figures in American bookselling, often impassioned eccentrics, and a history of how books have been marketed and sold over the course of more than two centuries—including, for example, a 3,000-pound elephant who signed books at Marshall Field’s in 1944.
The Bookshop is a love letter to bookstores, a charming chronicle for anyone who cherishes these sanctuaries of literature, and essential reading to understand how these vital institutions have shaped American life—and why we still need them.
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Community Reviews
If you love books and bookshops, you will love this guided journey through the history, personal stories, and nuances of what makes bookshops magical places. Evan Friss’s objective is simply to explore why we need them, how they serve communities, people, and the book industry as a whole. He lands on this target and then some. One line summarizes the state of things very well: “A bookstore needs to be more than a place to buy books if it is to survive.”
Friss’s beginning to current timeline demonstrates how bookshops can be representative of the state of development in a city or town. Much in the same way we see the presence of a Starbucks as a measure of progress today. More broadly speaking, bookshops can serve as a barometer of the intellectual balance of a nation. Specifically, specifically in how they nurture the literacy and critical thinking of the nation.
This book is very timely, given the resurgence of Barnes and Noble and what comes next in an anti-intellectualist America. Literacy levels among adults are appalling, and Generation Alpha is struggling to gain proficiency as well. Bookshops are more important than ever then. Not just for reading ability but for the culture of book lovers, not just the love of books themselves. The hunt, debates, the shared remembrances, and the spaces themselves. Bookshops create community, provide belonging, and reinforce purpose in pursuing reading.
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