s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all]'s Reviews > The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore

I’ve always said that bookstore employees are rockstars but I’m a bit biased.

I love my job
Having spent many years working bookstores—in both a Barnes and Noble and currently at a delightful indie bookstore, Readers World— I was eager to check out Evan Friss’ The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore. Books are part of the lifeblood of a society, they are a comfort and a friend when in need, they open your mind, expand your horizons, they frame the past and speculate the future, the show you the possibilities of life, language, they are ‘a uniquely portable magic’ as Stephen King once wrote. ‘Books and doors are the same thing,’ Jeanette Winterson—my favorite person to write books—said, ‘you open them, and you go through into another world,’ and by opening the door to a bookstore you are transported into a realm of possibility and potential magic behind every cover. Also shoutout to libraries (I must add as I type this from my desk in a library) where this potential of possibility does not come at a cost. Friss writes that ‘a city without a bookstore wasn't a city worth calling home,’ and I’m proud to work in our city’s indie bookstore which was, in fact, the very first place I went to check out when I moved here. One day, after being a regular for years, I walked in to pick up a book I had preordered (Flights by Olga Tokarczuk) and they offered me a job. Best job I’ve ever had. But librarian s.penkevich would like to consider some nuance missing from Friss’ statement that, sure it’s fun to say and all but some communities are unable to support one which is compounded with the issue that so much of the goal behind book ban attempts is to disenfranchise support for public institutions and dissolve libraries and free access to books, moving everything behind privatized access with a price barrier. But moving along.

'The right book put in the right hands at the right time could change the course of a life or many lives.'

In The Bookstore, Friss takes us through a history of American bookstores from early collections by Benjamin Franklin to noteworthy stores like The Strand or The National Memorial African Bookstore, into the chains of Barnes & Noble or Amazon that have dramatically reshaped the book industry into the digital age. Friss pauses along the way to celebrate the ancillary heroes to bookstore, like the UPS driver and bookstore cats that ensure the books are flowing or improve the vibes. It is a rather cherry-picked and anecdotal history that feels more like a collection of essays full of fun tales than, say, an exhaustive or academic history, but it made for an interesting read that is sure to delight anyone with an interest in bookstores.

‘You see, bookshops are dreams built of wood and paper. They are time travel and escape and knowledge and power. They are, simply put, the best of places.’
—Jen Campbell, Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops

As Friss tells us, ‘the right book put in the right hands at the right time could change the course of a life or many lives,’ and I rather enjoy this loving view on bookstores, booksellers and the customers who frequent them. While this book focuses specifically on bookstores in the United States, the history of bookselling reaches all the way back to ancient times. Around 300BC, the founding of the Library of Alexandria created a need for obtaining books and brought about a robust bookselling practice amongst Athenians. The Abbasid Caliphate and Caliphate of Córdoba encouraged the trade of books across the Muslim world with Damascus, Baghdad, and Córdoba becoming major centers for book dealers. Meanwhile, Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press brought a surge of bookselling into France and across Europe in the mid 1400s, and the Librairie Nouvelle d'Orléans which opened in 1545 is still in operation and makes it the oldest bookstore in operation across Europe. Friss’ tales begin with the personal book collection of Benjamin Franklin and move into stories about the Old Corner Bookstore in Boston, which is unfortunately no longer in operation.


'A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.'
—John Milton, Areopagitica

The book is rather anecdotal and skips around to highlight some cool places, such as Parnassus books started by author Ann Patchett who ‘saw herself as more of a benefactor than a capitalist. It was about protecting an endangered species,’, though one might not necessarily find this to read like a history of bookselling in general. Though there are some rather interesting things to note, such as the legacy of radical bookstores like Drum & Spear, founded in 1968 as a space for Black activism in literature and were investigated by the FBI. One story shows they had been accused of providing communist propaganda after an agent failed to purchase Chairman Mao's Little Red Book there and bought it at another store, but still submitted it as evidence against them.

Another fascinating history here was the chapter on sidewalk vendor bookstores which were vilified by city officials such as a 1993 bill to remove them that was pushed by the same councilman who had once passed a law giving booksellers freedom to sell without a license. There is a sadness, however, as many of the bookstores included in the history of 20th century bookstores have now shut down. ‘The Old Corner helped launch American literature and the American bookstore,’ Friss writes, ‘Now it’s a Chipotle’. So it goes. The historic Denver bookstore Tattered Cover a historic bookstore in Denver that is regrettably absent in this book was recently purchased by Barnes and Noble. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and co-founder of City Lights Bookstore, once stated:

‘Don’t patronize the chain bookstores. Every time I see some author scheduled to read and sign his books at a chain bookstore, I feel like telling him he’s stabbing the independent bookstores in the back.’

Hopefully people have an indie bookstore available to them, which is a struggle especially in a lot of rural communities where having an alternative to Amazon or Barnes and Noble just isn't available. Many indie bookstores have been struggling too and I was surprised to learn that The Strand nearly closed during COVID. As the book progresses, we see more about how indie bookstore began to compete with chains, and now those chains compete with Amazon. Alas, Borders has gone away and Amazon purchased many of their storefronts for their physical Amazon stores like a psychopathic murderer wearing the skin of its victims. Amazon will also buy up entire first print runs leaving indie bookstores unable to stock certain new releases (or have an additional copy stuck on backorder for months), and so ideas like Ingrams Indie Vault that reserves books for indie bookstores and doesn't allow the big chains to take the whole print run have been helpful. Its always sad to me when a bookstore closes and makes me think of a favorite poem by James Tate:

Memory

A little bookstore used to call to me.
Eagerly I would go to it
hungry for the news
and the sure friendship.
It never failed to provide me
with whatever I needed.
Bookstore with a donkey in its heart,
bookstore full of clouds and
sometimes lightning, showers.
Books just in from Australia,
books by madmen and giants.
Toucans would alight on my stovepipe hat
and solve mysteries with a few chosen words.
Picasso would appear in a kimono
requesting a discount, and then
laugh at his own joke.
Little bookstore with its belly
full of wisdom and confetti,
with eyebrows of wildflowers-
and customers from Denmark and Japan,
New York and California, psychics
and lawyers, clergymen and hitchhikers,
the wan, the strong, the crazy,
all needing books, needing directions,
needing a friend, or a place to sit down.
But then one day the shelves began to empty
and a hush fell over the store.
No new books arrived.
When the dying was done,
only a fragile, tattered thing remained,
and I haven’t the heart to name it.

I found this poem on my last day working at Barnes and Noble so it hit hard. And so, of particular interest to me in this book was the section on Barnes & Noble and the recent acquisition of the company by James Daunt of Waterstones bookstores in the UK fame. I spent several years as a keyholder in a Barnes and Noble in what felt very much like a slow spiraling decline under Leonard Riggio, who’s life and legacy gets a rather positive and inspirational treatment here. Not that I have anything against him but I’m fairly certain when he passed recently he probably vanished as a cloud of bats and unpaid debts (anyone else remember the BN credit card scandal?) but he certainly did build an impressive chain from humble beginnings and Daunt has very much improved on the design. Under Daunt, as Friss points out, BNs have come to feel much more localized by giving the stores more control over title acquisition and displays to present a more indie bookstore feel.

‘So often, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me, and reminded me that there are good things in the world.’
—Vincent van Gogh

Friss does give Amazon a lot of positive spin while glossing over their legacy of union busting and anti-worker policies, though he also does champion physical spaces over online retail. I enjoyed the section discussing the #BoxedOut Campaign organized by the American Booksellers Association to promote buying through physical indie retailers as opposed to Amazon. I wish it went more into how Amazon harms bookstores and strategized to push indie retailers out through things like loss leaders. According to census data more than 50% of US indie bookstores closed between 1998 and 2019 and (as reported in The Nation in 2024) Amazon now sells over 300 million books a year to generate $28billion each year and owns more than half the US print market.

‘ People may not realize the cost and consequences of ‘convenience’ shopping until it's too late… Closed indie bookstores represent the loss of local jobs and local tax dollars; the loss of community centers; and the loss of opportunities for readers to discover books and connect with other readers in a meaningful face-to-face way.’
— Allison K Hill, CEO of American Booksellers Association

Of course there are many reasons such as mobility issues or lack of access to a bookstore that lead to people purchasing books through Amazon, but the slogans for the campaign which included things like 'Buy Books from People Who Want to Sell Books, Not Colonize the Moon' were pretty great.

‘I love walking into a bookstore. It’s like all my friends are sitting on shelves, waving their pages at me.’
—Tahereh Mafi

Bookstores are such a lovely place and books are a necessary part of society. As we are all here on goodreads, I suspect most of you feel similarly. I love indie bookstores but, again, I'm a bit biased. But Readers World in Holland has been my happy place and going into work always feels like coming home. You can support us by following us on instagram or tiktok at @readersworldholland and you might see a familiar face since I do all the social media.

‘Bookstores also stimulate our senses. Being surrounded by books matters,’ Friss writes, ‘sociologists have found that just growing up in a home full of books—mere proximity—confers a lifetime of intellectual benefits.’ Long live books, long live bookstores, and long live libraries. While being a bit lighter than expected, The Bookshop was a fun and fascinating read and those with an interest in the subject matter will certainly enjoy it.

3.5/5

‘Whether in mysteries or memoirs, travelogues or true-crime tales, romances or rom-coms, horror or history, bookstores can be more than just passive backdrops. Bookstores can be actors. Bookstores, even the little ones, can shape the world around them. They already have.’

Also shoutout to libraries. Support your local library as well as your local indie bookstores. I'm lucky enough to get to do both. Sometimes on the same day. Which has, admittedly, confused a few people when they see me twice in one day.