Reluctant Capitalists

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226525929
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (265 download)

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Book Synopsis Reluctant Capitalists by : Laura J. Miller

Download or read book Reluctant Capitalists written by Laura J. Miller and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past half-century, bookselling, like many retail industries, has evolved from an arena dominated by independent bookstores to one in which chain stores have significant market share. And as in other areas of retail, this transformation has often been a less-than-smooth process. This has been especially pronounced in bookselling, argues Laura J. Miller, because more than most other consumer goods, books are the focus of passionate debate. What drives that debate? And why do so many people believe that bookselling should be immune to questions of profit? In Reluctant Capitalists, Miller looks at a century of book retailing, demonstrating that the independent/chain dynamic is not entirely new. It began one hundred years ago when department stores began selling books, continued through the 1960s with the emergence of national chain stores, and exploded with the formation of “superstores” in the 1990s. The advent of the Internet has further spurred tremendous changes in how booksellers approach their business. All of these changes have met resistance from book professionals and readers who believe that the book business should somehow be “above” market forces and instead embrace more noble priorities. Miller uses interviews with bookstore customers and members of the book industry to explain why books evoke such distinct and heated reactions. She reveals why customers have such fierce loyalty to certain bookstores and why they identify so strongly with different types of books. In the process, she also teases out the meanings of retailing and consumption in American culture at large, underscoring her point that any type of consumer behavior is inevitably political, with consequences for communities as well as commercial institutions.

Reluctant Capitalists

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135957401
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (359 download)

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Book Synopsis Reluctant Capitalists by : Linda M. Randall

Download or read book Reluctant Capitalists written by Linda M. Randall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2001-08-06 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reluctant Capitalists examines Russia's plodding, sometimes painful, journey toward a free-market. Through case studies, interviews and first-hand observation, Randall tells us of Russia's economic troubles and offers suggestions for making market reform work.

Videoland

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520958020
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Videoland by : Daniel Herbert

Download or read book Videoland written by Daniel Herbert and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-01-24 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Videoland offers a comprehensive view of the "tangible phase" of consumer video, when Americans largely accessed movies as material commodities at video rental stores. Video stores served as a vital locus of movie culture from the early 1980s until the early 2000s, changing the way Americans socialized around movies and collectively made movies meaningful. When films became tangible as magnetic tapes and plastic discs, movie culture flowed out from the theater and the living room, entered the public retail space, and became conflated with shopping and salesmanship. In this process, video stores served as a crucial embodiment of movie culture’s historical move toward increased flexibility, adaptability, and customization. In addition to charting the historical rise and fall of the rental industry, Herbert explores the architectural design of video stores, the social dynamics of retail encounters, the video distribution industry, the proliferation of video recommendation guides, and the often surprising persistence of the video store as an adaptable social space of consumer culture. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, cultural geography, and archival research, Videoland provides a wide-ranging exploration of the pivotal role video stores played in the history of motion pictures, and is a must-read for students and scholars of media history.

Reading, Wanting, and Broken Economics

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Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438483538
Total Pages : 445 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Reading, Wanting, and Broken Economics by : Simon R. Frost

Download or read book Reading, Wanting, and Broken Economics written by Simon R. Frost and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2021-05-01 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining historical study, theorization, and experimental fiction, this book takes commodity culture and book retail around 1900 as the prime example of a market of symbolic goods. With the port of Southampton, England, as his case study, Simon R. Frost reveals how the city's bookshops, with their combinations of libraries, haberdashery, stationery, and books, sustained and were sustained by the dreams of ordinary readers, and how together they created the values powering this market. The goods in this market were symbolic and were not "consumed" but read. Their readings were created between other readers and texts, in happy disobedience to the neoliberal laws of the free market. Today such reader-created social markets comprise much of the world's branded economies, which is why Frost calls for a new understanding of both literary and market values.

Fifty Key Thinkers on Development

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134304889
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (343 download)

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Book Synopsis Fifty Key Thinkers on Development by : David Simon

Download or read book Fifty Key Thinkers on Development written by David Simon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-05-02 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essential guide to the world’s most influential development thinkers, this authoritative text presents a unique guide to the lives and ideas of leading contributors to the contested terrain of development studies. Reflecting the diverse, interdisciplinary nature of the area, the book includes entries on: * modernisers like Hirshman, Kindleberger and Rostow * dependencistas such as Frank, Cardoso and Amin * progressives like Prebisch, Helleiner and Streeten * political leaders enunciating radical alternative visions of development, such as Mao, Nkrumah and Nyerere * progenitors of religiously or spiritually inspired development, such as Gandhi and Ariyaratne * development-environment thinkers like Blaikie, Brookfield and Shiva. This is a fascinating and readable introduction to the major figures that have shaped the field, ideal for anyone studying or working in the area.

Boom!

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Author :
Publisher : Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN 13 : 1554589401
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (545 download)

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Book Synopsis Boom! by : Julie Rak

Download or read book Boom! written by Julie Rak and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2013-06-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the early 1990s, tens of thousands of memoirs by celebrities and unknown people have been published, sold, and read by millions of American readers. The memoir boom, as the explosion of memoirs on the market has come to be called, has been welcomed, vilified, and dismissed in the popular press. But is there really a boom in memoir production in the United States? If so, what is causing it? Are memoirs all written by narcissistic hacks for an unthinking public, or do they indicate a growing need to understand world events through personal experiences? This study seeks to answer these questions by examining memoir as an industrial product like other products, something that publishers and booksellers help to create. These popular texts become part of mass culture, where they are connected to public events. The genre of memoir, and even genre itself, ceases to be an empty classification category and becomes part of social action and consumer culture at the same time. From James Frey’s controversial A Million Little Pieces to memoirs about bartending, Iran, the liberation of Dachau, computer hacking, and the impact of 9/11, this book argues that the memoir boom is more than a publishing trend. It is becoming the way American readers try to understand major events in terms of individual experiences. The memoir boom is one of the ways that citizenship as a category of belonging between private and public spheres is now articulated.

The Bookshop

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0593299930
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis The Bookshop by : Evan Friss

Download or read book The Bookshop written by Evan Friss and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2024-08-06 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Buy Now

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262543303
Total Pages : 327 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Buy Now by : Emily West

Download or read book Buy Now written by Emily West and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Amazon combined branding and relationship marketing with massive distribution infrastructure to become the ultimate service brand in the digital economy. Amazon is ubiquitous in our daily lives—we stream movies and television on Amazon Prime Video, converse with Alexa, receive messages on our smartphone about the progress of our latest orders. In Buy Now, Emily West examines Amazon’s consumer-facing services to investigate how Amazon as a brand grew so quickly and inserted itself into so many aspects of our lives even as it faded into the background, becoming a sort of infrastructure that can be taken for granted. Amazon promotes the comfort and care of its customers (but not its workers) to become the ultimate service brand in the digital economy. West shows how Amazon has cultivated personalized, intimate relationships with consumers that normalize its outsized influence on our selves and our communities. She describes the brand’s focus on speedy and seamless ecommerce delivery, represented in the materiality of the branded brown box; the positioning of its book retailing, media streaming, and smart speakers as services rather than sales; and the brand’s image control strategies. West considers why pushback against Amazon’s ubiquity and market power has come mainly from among Amazon’s workers rather than its customers or competitors, arguing that Amazon’s brand logic fragments consumers as a political bloc. West’s innovative account, the first to examine Amazon from a critical media studies perspective, offers a cautionary cultural study of bigness in today’s economy.

Notions of Community

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Author :
Publisher : Peter Lang
ISBN 13 : 9783039113743
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (137 download)

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Book Synopsis Notions of Community by : Janey Gordon

Download or read book Notions of Community written by Janey Gordon and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2009 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume gets beyond simple descriptions of the values and processes involved in community media and is deliberately seeking argument and structured debate around the issues of this vibrant sector of the media. The contributors examine the dilemmas that have emerged within this sector and provide an incisive overview. The chapters use case studies and data research to illustrate the major debates facing community media, along with a sideways look at the dilemmas that community media practitioners and their audiences must engage with. This collection provides an international perspective and covers the traditional formats as well as newer media technologies. It also gives some intriguing examples of community media, which get beyond simple good practices.

Independently Wealthy

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Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 9780471061281
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (612 download)

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Book Synopsis Independently Wealthy by : Robert Goodman

Download or read book Independently Wealthy written by Robert Goodman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2001-10-29 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praise for INDEPENDENTLY WEALTHY Second Edition "Anyone who has heard Dr. Goodman speak knows he delivers intelligent advice in a clear, forthright manner. His book does the same, helping investors chart a well-thought-out financial plan."–Miles Gordon, CEO, ING Advisors Network First Edition "Are you looking for a way to take charge of your financial future? Read Bob Goodman’s Independently Wealthy. It is a terrific first step to financial prosperity."–Bill Griffeth, Anchor, CNBC-TV "A fascinating look at the events and trends influencing today’s economy, coupled with pragmatic ideas on creating a solid investment portfolio."–Ginger Applegarth, author, The Money Diet: –Reaping the Rewards of Financial Fitness "Written in a forthright and accessible manner, Independently Wealthy places current economic events into perspective. It is must reading for anyone who aspires to financial independence in the new economic era."–Arthur Laffer, President, A. B. Laffer, V. A. Canto & Associates "A well-reasoned, commonsense approach to achieving financial independence in the new economic landscape."–John Bachmann, Managing Partner, Edward Jones "Bob Goodman’s message about retirement: Uncle Sam is about to take the ax to Social Security and Medicare, but he’s providing plenty of help for workers who are willing to invest for their own financially secure retirement. Goodman shows that you have to deal effectively with this new reality."–Todd Robinson, Chairman and CEO, LPL Financial Securities

Solidarity in Strategy

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Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226769569
Total Pages : 532 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (267 download)

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Book Synopsis Solidarity in Strategy by : Lyn Spillman

Download or read book Solidarity in Strategy written by Lyn Spillman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular conceptions hold that capitalism is driven almost entirely by the pursuit of profit and self-interest. Challenging that assumption, this major new study of American business associations shows how market and non-market relations are actually profoundly entwined at the heart of capitalism. In Solidarity in Strategy, Lyn Spillman draws on rich documentary archives and a comprehensive data set of more than four thousand trade associations from diverse and obscure corners of commercial life to reveal a busy and often surprising arena of American economic activity. From the Intelligent Transportation Society to the American Gem Trade Association, Spillman explains how business associations are more collegial than cutthroat, and how they make capitalist action meaningful not only by developing shared ideas about collective interests but also by articulating a disinterested solidarity that transcends those interests. Deeply grounded in both economic and cultural sociology, Solidarity in Strategy provides rich, lively, and often surprising insights into the world of business, and leads us to question some of our most fundamental assumptions about economic life and how cultural context influences economic.

The Fortnightly Review

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 1008 pages
Book Rating : 4.E/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Fortnightly Review by :

Download or read book The Fortnightly Review written by and published by . This book was released on 1890 with total page 1008 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Beyond Self-Interest

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197620930
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (976 download)

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Book Synopsis Beyond Self-Interest by : Krzysztof Pelc

Download or read book Beyond Self-Interest written by Krzysztof Pelc and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-09 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative retelling of the workings of self-interest in contemporary market society, which claims the world increasingly belongs to passionates, obsessives, and fanatics: those who do things for their own sake, rather than as means to other ends. In our capitalist market society, we have come to accept that the way to get ahead is through strong will, grit, and naked ambition. This belief has served us well: it has contributed to making our affluent societies affluent. But does the premise still hold? As Krzysztof Pelc argues in Beyond Self-Interest, this default assumption no longer captures reality. There is a limit to the returns of calculation, planning, and resolve, and in a growing number of settings, this limit has been reached. The true idols of market society, he contends, are those who disavow their self-interest, or at least appear to do so: eco-conscious entrepreneurs, media moguls with a mission, and modern-day artisans catering to a well-educated and ever more socially conscious population of consumers. Increasingly, those who prosper do so by spurning prosperity, or by convincing others that they are instead pursuing purpose, passion, love of craft-anything but their own self-advancement. This is the paradox of intention, and it is increasingly defining our lives. Pelc tells the story of this paradox from its unlikely emergence among a group of British thinkers in the early 19th century to its development over the next two centuries, as it was successively picked up by philosophers, novelists, social scientists, and, ultimately, capitalists themselves. All of whom arrived at a common realization: the appearance of disinterest pays, but only if it is believable-which presents the self-interested among us with a tricky problem. Drawing on three centuries of thought about commercial society and the people living in it, this richly researched account of the cycles of capitalism does not naively suggest that we should reject the market. Rather, it calls on us to treat economic growth once more as its earliest theorists did: as a formidable tool of human development, instead of an end in itself.

Russia's Capitalist Realism

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Author :
Publisher : Northwestern University Press
ISBN 13 : 0810142481
Total Pages : 247 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis Russia's Capitalist Realism by : Vadim Shneyder

Download or read book Russia's Capitalist Realism written by Vadim Shneyder and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia’s Capitalist Realism examines how the literary tradition that produced the great works of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Anton Chekhov responded to the dangers and possibilities posed by Russia’s industrial revolution. During Russia’s first tumultuous transition to capitalism, social problems became issues of literary form for writers trying to make sense of economic change. The new environments created by industry, such as giant factories and mills, demanded some kind of response from writers but defied all existing forms of language. This book recovers the rich and lively public discourse of this volatile historical period, which Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov transformed into some of the world’s greatest works of literature. Russia’s Capitalist Realism will appeal to readers interested in nineteenth‐century Russian literature and history, the relationship between capitalism and literary form, and theories of the novel.

Readings in the Economics of War

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 1004 pages
Book Rating : 4.A/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Readings in the Economics of War by : John Maurice Clark

Download or read book Readings in the Economics of War written by John Maurice Clark and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 1004 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, Volume III

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Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520905857
Total Pages : 894 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, Volume III by : Mark Twain

Download or read book Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, Volume III written by Mark Twain and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 894 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume III of Mark Twain's notebooks spans the years 1883 to 1891, a period during which Mark Twain's personal fortunes reached their zenith, as he emerged as one of the most successful authors and publishers in American literary history. During these years Life on the Mississippi, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court appeared, revealing the diversity, depth, and vitality of Mark Twain's literary talents. With his speeches, his public performances, and his lecture tour of 1884/1885, he became the most recognizable of national figures. At the same time, Mark Twain's growing fame and prosperity allowed him to plunge deeply into the business world, a sphere not suited to his erratic energies. He created the subscription publish firm of Charles L. Webster & Company, Which published the most profitable book of its time, the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. And he became the primary financial support for the ingenious but imperfectible Paige typesetter. Within a few years both the publishing company and the typesetter had taxed Mark Twain's patience, and pocket, beyond endurance. The near bankruptcy of the publishing firm and the debacle of the typesetter scheme finally resulted in 1891 in a drastic decision--to leave the house in Hartford, Connecticut, which had long been the symbol of Mark Twain's rising fortunes and idyllic family life, and move to Europe for an indefinite period in the hope of reducing the family's living expenses. The Clemens family would never return to the Hartford house, and the European stay would lengthen into an almost unbroken nine years of exile. Mark Twain's notebooks permit an intimate view of this turbulent period, whose triumphs were tempered by intimations of financial disaster and personal bitterness.

The Rise of the Modernist Bookshop

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317017463
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rise of the Modernist Bookshop by : Huw Osborne

Download or read book The Rise of the Modernist Bookshop written by Huw Osborne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The trade in books has always been and remains an ambiguous commercial activity, associated as it is with literature and the exchange of ideas. This collection is concerned with the cultural and economic roles of independent bookstores, and it considers how eight shops founded during the modernist era provided distinctive spaces of literary production that exceeded and yet never escaped their commercial functions. As the contributors show, these booksellers were essential institutional players in literary networks. When the eight shops examined first opened their doors, their relevance to literary and commercial life was taken for granted. In our current context of box stores, online shopping, and ebooks, we no longer encounter the book as we did as recently as twenty years ago. By contributing to our understanding of bookshops as unique social spaces on the thresholds of commerce and culture, this volume helps to lay the groundwork for comprehending how our relationship to books and literature has been and will be affected by the physical changes to the reading experience taking place in the twenty-first century.