About the Book

Title: The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore

Author: Evan Friss

Genre: Nonfiction/History

Pages: 416

Edition Read: Kindle eBook

Dates Read: September 25 – November 11, 2025

Blurb: 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 those 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, 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 more than two centuries—including, for example, a 3,000-pound elephant who appeared to sign 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.

Review

As I’ve said in the past, I don’t usually read a lot of nonfiction. I really should read more because, with a few exceptions, I always enjoy it. This book won the GoodReads Choice Award for Best History/Biography and I can see why. It was a breath of fresh air.

Since this is primarily a book blog, it’s no surprise that I love a good bookstore. Trips to New York City have been planned around hitting the Barnes & Noble at Union Square and browsing the stacks at the Strand. There’s just something about the atmosphere of a bookstore. Friss takes us on a journey through time, from Benjamin Franklin to the advent of Amazon, showing how bookstores inspired people and shaped the events of history. Sprinkled in were the anectdotes of real people, both shop proprietors and their customers, who had their lives changed by books and the people who write and read them. It was really beautiful, although it’s quite sad that bookstores are no longer have the cultural and local impact that they used to.

If you enjoy history and you enjoy reading, this is definitely a book to pick up. It was delightful, insightful, at times heartbreaking, and all around enjoyable.

GoodReads rating: 4 stars

Categories: Books I've Read