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 ... draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, catalogs, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a ... look at this institution beloved by so many--not just as a merchant, but as a gathering place for likeminded people who cherish books--