When young boys, or girls for that matter, wander off into their inner world, magical things can happen. That is where the reality of the adult world becomes less than real, often dissappearing altogether. Hard things can become soft, gravity be denied and both time and distance get mixed up. Adults say "You're imagining things. Stop daydreaming and do something useful," but who is to say what is real and what is imagined? I certainly prefer the so called 'imagined' world to the other, 'real world', where hard things are hard and supper time is fixed. So let's join Marcus Parnassus in his adventures, where supper time is always when you're hungry and bed time is flexible.
"Tracy Lee Simmons readily concedes that there is little reason to hope for a widespread renascence in the teaching of Greek and Latin to our nation's schoolchildren. But he argues that, whatever its immediate prospects, an education in the classical languages is of inestimable personal and cultural value.".
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "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.
