★ 06/24/2024

In 1993, there were 13,499 bookstores in America; in 2021, there were 5,591. Yet historian Friss (On Bicycles) offers an upbeat and immersive take on bookselling’s much ballyhooed demise; “bookstores have never felt more alive,” he asserts (he also cites a famous quip made by a bookseller in 1961 that books have “been a dying business for 5,000 years”). Friss’s jampacked account spans from early America to the present day, beginning with precursors to the modern bookstore like Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia printshop (where the first novel was printed in America—Samuel Richardson’s Pamela) and Boston literary hangout The Old Corner (where Nathaniel Hawthorne liked to loiter), and ending with chapters on Amazon Books and Ann Patchett’s Parnassus in Nashville, Tenn. (Friss gleefully notes that, while Amazon closed all of its 24 brick-and-mortar stores by 2022, Parnassus has experienced double-digit growth since it 2011 founding). Along the way, he chronicles the history of over a dozen notable bookstores (many of them now-defunct New York greats, like the Midtown modernist stronghold Gotham Book Mart and the Greenwich Village paragon of gay rights activism Oscar Wilde), interspersing these chapters with ruminations on the role of the buyer, the importance of the UPS driver, and other bits of bookstore arcana that refreshingly focus on the behind-the-scenes experience of bookselling. It’s an entrancing deep dive into the book industry, reports of whose death have been greatly exaggerated. (Aug.)

Praise for The Bookshop

“A pleasure. . . . A spirited defense of this important, odd and odds-defying American retail category."
—The New York Times

"Serious browsers will love this history of American bookstores . . . . Lively. . . . [Friss] has produced a work of popular history that is both entertaining and informative.”
—The Washington Post

"Fascinating. . . . A heartfelt, essential love letter to the literary sanctuary of bookstores and the people who run them."
—People magazine, "Book of the Week"

"Engaging."
—The Wall Street Journal

“Marvelous. . . . The Bookshop is a paean to those magical places and is a must-read to understand why bookshops have been such an integral part of American life for so long, and why they—even in an age of social media—remain an 'influencer' today."
—The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"A series of thirteen mini-profiles of notable bookstores and their owners. . . . Friss sees the small bookstore in contemporary America as a haven from commercialism—a place where books are treated as more than mere merchandise—and as a community-building space. . . . In Friss’s account, the bookstore survives by redefining itself."
—The New Yorker

"If you love books, and bookstores, you're absolutely going to love Evan Friss's The Bookshop. . . . 'That bookstores continue to endure is, in some ways, something of a miracle,' Friss writes in his introduction. But we're so thankful they do—and that there's this tribute to them."
—Town & Country’s “39 Must-Read Books of Summer 2024”

"Attentive and thoughtful. . . . Evan Friss is the companionable guide we all deserve on this trip to bookstores throughout time, offering a treasure trove of information and anecdotes, and bittersweetly reminding us all how important these institutions are, how necessary to our culture and communities and how we must do everything in our power to protect them."
—Julia Hass, Lit Hub's "Most Anticipated Books of 2024"

"Upbeat and immersive. . . . An entrancing deep dive into the book industry."
—Publishers Weekly (STARRED review)

"Eye-opening. . . . A thoroughly engaging, delightful excursion into the wondrous world of books.”
—Kirkus Reviews (STARRED review)

"There’s something here guaranteed to evoke a warm memory in every bibliophile. . . . A book you will cherish."
—Book Reporter

“Bookstores are such idiosyncratic expressions of the humans who run them, and it is a delight to wander through the bookstores of American history in this warm, generous book. I find myself in excellent company amongst the featured booksellers—all fully dedicated, driven by passion, and slightly mad. It's a wonderful business we're in.”
—Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author and owner of Books Are Magic

“This bookseller read Evan Friss’s The Bookshop with the greatest delight. Friss’s history of the independent bookshop in the United states is very much like his subject—deeply authoritative, very personal, and very engaging.”
—Paul Yamazaki, City Lights Bookseller and Publisher

“Is there anything better than a bookshop? Perhaps, just perhaps, a book about bookshops. This is what Evan Friss has given us, and like its subject, it is a portal to endless discovery. The histories and personalities, the challenges and pleasures, everything happening behind the scenes—all come alive in his marvelous account.”
—Glenn Adamson, author of Craft: An American History

“Evan Friss has written a charming, deeply researched history of the understated but vital role that booksellers have played in forging the American identity. Rich in incident and richer in the colorful characters who have sold—or tried to sell—books to a reliably intractable public from the days of the Old Corner Bookstore till today, The Bookshop is an absolute delight.”
—Stephen Sparks, owner of Point Reyes Books

"Delightfully similar to actually being in a favorite bookstore. . . . Peculiar and wonderful things are learned along the way. . . . Friss assembles all these terrific details and anecdotes like a Georges Seurat of history—little drops of fact come together to create a solid portrait of the bookstore business in America and its decline."
—New City Lit

"Very well-researched. . . . Friss tells the story of an institution that has been deified, mythologized, and made the subject of novels. . . . Bibliophiles, bluestockings, and history buffs will want to dive in."
—Air Mail

"The Bookshop argues persuasively that not only are these institutions a crucial part of U.S. social and political history, but that they are also worth fighting for in the face of a new generation of technological and financial threats."
—Shelf Awareness

"[An] entertaining romp through history. . . . More than anything, Friss is a storyteller. Each chapter introduces us to fascinating, dedi­cated booksellers."
—BookPage

"A lively history."
—Booklist

Jay Myers narrates this fascinating audiobook about American bookstores with enthusiasm for its subject, neutrality toward its facts, and admiration for its stories. The wealth of topics discussed is astounding: early bookstores, past and present bibliophiles, particular bookstores' scents, and more. Myers's pacing is leisurely, and he highlights meaningful quotes, such as the one from a bookseller who points out the industry "has been a dying business for 5,000 years." Whether he's recounting anecdotes from Ben Franklin about early publishing, sharing the difficulties of today's independent bookstores as they try to survive amid behemoths like Amazon, or illuminating the passions of authors like Ann Patchett, who own their own bookstores-- listeners can count on Myers to maintain their engagement. S.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

★ 2024-04-19
A past and present who’s who of America’s diverse bookstores.

Historian Friss, the author of The Cycling City and On Bicycles, begins with a description of his visit to Three Lives Bookstore in New York City, the first of many encounters with booksellers across America. In Philadelphia, master entrepreneur Benjamin Franklin was “a shopkeeper who sold books” and many other products, and in 1828, the Old Corner Bookstore was born in Boston. Over the next few decades, the number of stores in the U.S. gradually increased. On the eve of the Civil War, the North dwarfed the South in bookstores, and stores that printed books and itinerant bookstores were common. To counter the male-dominated American Booksellers Association, the Women’s National Book Association was created in 1917. Around the same time, Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company was its own superstore and its successful manager, Marcella Hahner, became a sought-after book blurber who initiated in-store book signings, book rentals, mailed Christmas catalogs, and the first book festival. Francis Steloff, the “powerhouse” of Gotham Book Mart, printed catalogs written by authors (Pound, Cummings) and sold many illegal imported books. Friss browses wistfully among New York City’s Book Row, especially the massive Strand bookstore, and his chapter on the pro-Hitler Aryan Boom Store in Los Angeles is particularly eye-opening. The Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore in Greenwich Village, he writes, was the “first of its kind.” Friss also covers the FBI-investigated, Black-focused Drum & Spear in Washington, D.C. Then the elephant in the room, Len Riggio’s Barnes & Noble, raises its head. Friss does a fine, fair job of assessing it and the other superstores and their origins, including Amazon, the “eight-hundred-pound gorilla,” the failure of their bookstores, and the success of Ann Patchett’s, Parnassus.

A thoroughly engaging, delightful excursion into the wondrous world of books.