
The Bookshop
A History of the American Bookstore
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Narrated by:
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Jay Myers
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By:
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Evan Friss
About this listen
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.
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From private feuds and on-set disasters to fanfare that swept the nation and the realities of child stardom, culture journalist Ashley Spencer offers the first unauthorized look at the heyday of TV’s House of Mouse, featuring hundreds of exclusive new interviews with former Disney executives, creatives, and talent to explore the highs, lows, and everything in between.
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Reads like fiction!
- By Leslie on 10-05-24
By: Ashley Spencer
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The Ministry of Time
- A Novel
- By: Kaliane Bradley
- Narrated by: George Weightman, Katie Leung
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.
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More than the sum of its parts but…
- By L. Williams on 05-17-24
By: Kaliane Bradley
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How to End a Love Story
- A Novel
- By: Yulin Kuang
- Narrated by: Katharine Chin, Andrew Eiden
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Helen Zhang hasn’t seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years since the tragic accident that bound their lives together forever. Now a bestselling author, Helen pours everything into her career. She’s even scored a coveted spot in the writers’ room of the TV adaptation of her popular young adult novels, and if she can hide her imposter syndrome and overcome her writer’s block, surely the rest of her life will fall into place too. LA is the fresh start she needs. After all, no one knows her there. Except…
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very good story
- By Jessi Johnson on 06-01-24
By: Yulin Kuang
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Women's Hotel
- A Novel
- By: Daniel M. Lavery
- Narrated by: Mara Wilson
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The Beidermeier might be several rungs lower on the ladder than the real-life Barbizon, but its residents manage to occupy one another nonetheless. There’s Katherine, the first-floor manager, lightly cynical and more than lightly suggestible. There’s Lucianne, a workshy party girl caught between the love of comfort and an instinctive bridling at convention, Kitty the sponger, Ruth the failed hairdresser, and Pauline the typesetter. And there’s Stephen, the daytime elevator operator and part-time Cooper Union student.
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a great story!
- By cathryn vitek on 11-10-24
By: Daniel M. Lavery
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Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop
- By: Hwang Bo-reum, Shanna Tan - translator
- Narrated by: Rosa Escoda
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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Yeongju did everything she was supposed to, go to university, marry a decent man, get a respectable job. Then it all fell apart. Burned out, Yeongju abandons her old life, quits her high-flying career, divorces her husband, and follows her dream. She opens a bookshop. In a quaint neighbourhood in Seoul, surrounded by books, Yeongju and her customers take refuge. From the lonely barista to the unhappily married housewife, and the writer who sees something special in Yeongju - they all have disappointments in their past.
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cozy contemplations on life
- By brittany on 02-22-24
By: Hwang Bo-reum, and others
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The World She Edited
- Katharine S. White at The New Yorker
- By: Amy Reading
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 20 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1925, Katharine Sergeant Angell White walked into The New Yorker’s midtown office and left with a job as an editor. The magazine was only a few months old. Over the next thirty-six years, White would transform the publication into a literary powerhouse. This exquisite biography brings to life the remarkable relationships White fostered with her writers and how these relationships nurtured an astonishing array of literary talent.
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A deep dive into a literary life
- By AMC on 10-27-24
By: Amy Reading
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Worst Case Scenario
- By: T.J. Newman
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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When a pilot suffers a heart attack at 35,000 feet, a commercial airliner filled with passengers crashes into a nuclear power plant in the small town of Waketa, Minnesota, which becomes ground zero for a catastrophic national crisis with global implications. The International Nuclear Event Scale tracks nuclear disasters. It has seven levels. Level 7 is a Major Accident, with only two on record: Fukushima and Chernobyl. There has never been a Level 8. Until now.
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Just awesome
- By Victor @ theAudiobookBlog dot com on 08-14-24
By: T.J. Newman
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The Pairing
- By: Casey McQuiston
- Narrated by: Emma Galvin, Max Meyers
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Theo and Kit have been a lot of things: childhood best friends, crushes, in love, and now estranged exes. After a brutal breakup on the transatlantic flight to their dream European food and wine tour, they exited each other's lives once and for all. Time apart has done them good. Theo has found confidence as a hustling bartender by night and aspiring sommelier by day, with a long roster of casual lovers. Kit, who never returned to America, graduated as the reigning sex god of his pastry school class and now bakes at one of the finest restaurants in Paris.
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good story but distracting narrator
- By Kindle Customer on 08-10-24
By: Casey McQuiston
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Anita de Monte Laughs Last
- A Novel
- By: Xochitl Gonzalez
- Narrated by: Jessica Pimentel, Jonathan Gregg, Stacy Gonzalez
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn’t. By 1998 Anita’s name has been all but forgotten—certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret.
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Thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this book.
- By Ulissa on 03-14-24
By: Xochitl Gonzalez
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The Door-to-Door Bookstore
- A Novel
- By: Carsten Henn
- Narrated by: Raphael Corkhill
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Small-town German bookseller Carl Kollhoff delivers his books to special customers in the evening hours after closing time, walking through the picturesque alleys of the city. These people are almost like friends to him, and he is their most important connection to the world. When Kollhoff unexpectedly loses his job, it takes the power of books and a nine-year-old girl to make them all find the courage to rebuild their bonds with each other.
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Delightful
- By susan boardman on 07-11-23
By: Carsten Henn
What listeners say about The Bookshop
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Dennis J Gallagher
- 01-01-25
A very well-researched cultural history presented with humor and lack of pomposity.
Though they are certainly part of the story, the chapters on ideological and movement bookstores stand apart from the main story of where general readers in America buy books.
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- Customer - Reader
- 02-22-25
Fun if you like book stuff
Well organised and good snapshots of the evolving book trade. Neat anecdotes and stories that kept the story moving along
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- Lili
- 12-09-24
Final chapter is worth the price of admission 📚📚📚
This book really does cover the history of American bookstores, starting way back in the 1700's with folks like Benjamin Franklin. For me the book got a whole lot more interesting once it got to the 1920s and forward. There were some truly groundbreaking bookstores, and groundbreaking female booksellers, that changed the industry starting in that era, and continuing for decades.
Which brings us to the last chapter in the book which is dedicated to Parnassus Books, and it's extraordinary owner, Ann Patchett. She's not the first successful author to open a bookstore, but she really stands out from the pack. Not only is her store wildly successful, and her staff happy and well paid, but Ms Patchett dedicates a lot of her time promoting other authors, and other independent bookstores, elevating the success of the entire industry in the process. Lots of authors own bookstores now, the final chapter in this book show you how Ann Patchett did it, and when, and why, it makes for great reading.
If you have interest she also has a YouTube channel and every Tuesday Ann and three of her staff, and her dog Nemo, film something called The Laydown Diaries in the store, to let people know about what new books are dropping. I never miss it.
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- Kathleen Rosenthal
- 09-11-24
research and information about book shops’ history
I was totally captivated by the history of book shops! So much learned and shared. I’m impressed by the detailed research on the history of book selling.
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- Leila Jaafari
- 10-11-24
Bibliophiles rejoice!!!
A book about Bookstores. What’s not to like?! From Franklins bookstore prior to the American revolution to Parnassus books in Nashville in 2011.
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- j_lo_0201
- 01-06-25
I never knew
What a fantastic book. So much history lies (unknown by many) about bookshops and those who ran them and why they opened them. Very eye opening, educational and fun.
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- Bb
- 09-14-24
Fascinating History of American Bookstores
This is history through a sociological lens and vice versa. The book accentuates bookshops’ roles in not only enriching communities but also building them.
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- preachereast
- 02-09-25
I like first half not so much second
I really enjoyed the first half the second half was very liberal and very one-sided. That’s why I only gave it three stars.
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