The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore

by Evan Friss

Being surrounded by books matters. Sociologists have found that just growing up in a home full of books—mere proximity—confers a lifetime of intellectual benefits.

Books hold ideas. Ideas hold power.

“Book-tasting…makes one hungry for more than he needs for the nourishment of his thinking-marrow.”

Christopher Morley worked during the Christmas season in 1913, 1914, and 1915. In his quasi-autobiographical novel, John Mistletoe, Morley

The Old Corner helped launch American literature and the American bookstore. Now it’s a Chipotle.

Mifflin and McGill are the costars of Parnassus on Wheels, Christopher Morley’s 1917 novel, his first. The book was an instant classic.

Havelock Ellis’s The Dance of Life

Morley’s sequel to Parnassus on Wheels, The Haunted Bookshop,

Coady put together a collection to prove it: The Book That Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them.

In 1973, Rubyfruit Jungle—a bildungsroman about a lesbian named Molly—became a shop bestseller. Its author, Rita Mae Brown, was an early Oscar Wilde patron and had been on one of Rodwell’s protest buses heading to Philadelphia.

Jane Jacobs’s most influential book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.