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79 books match the query 'Books' and 4 start with r

cover of Rare and Used: Adventures of a Book Scout's Apprentice

Rare and Used

Adventures of a Book Scout's Apprentice

Daniel Dietz

Oregon State University Press, 2026

Coming home to Oregon to reconnect with his aging parents, Daniel Dietz discovers the rhythms and relationships of a changing book world. As the internet pushes bibliophiles away from used bookstores and toward digital commerce, Dietz’s stepfather Michael, now nearing eighty, clings to the precarious trade of scouring thrift stores and library sales for rare books to sell. He explores the stacks, from garage sales in Eugene’s Whiteaker neighborhood to Portland’s Powell’s City of Books, for overlooked first editions and valuable rare books from the past.

With humor and tenderness, Rare and Used introduces us to Michael and to a dedicated and zealous community of book people, each with a grail book that they seek above all others. For Dietz, it’s Beat poet Diane di Prima’s debut collection This Kind of Bird Flies Backward—a book once owned by his stepfather. In his quest for the book, Dietz grapples with larger questions about possession, inheritance, and what we can hold onto. A tribute to books and booksellers as well as to family and place, Rare and Used explores what it means to return home to a community that shaped you.

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cover of Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption

Reluctant Capitalists

Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption

Laura J. Miller

University of Chicago Press, 2006

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.
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cover of River of Books

River of Books

Donna Seaman

Prickly Paradigm Press, 2024

A memoir of reading and working with books by the renowned Booklist editor.

With the infectious curiosity of an inveterate bibliophile and the prose of a fine stylist, Donna Seaman charts the course of her early reading years in a book-by-book chronicle of the significance books have held in her life. River of Books recounts Seaman’s journey in becoming an editor for Booklist, a reviewer, an author, and a literary citizen, and lays bare how she nourished both body and soul in working with books. Seaman makes palpable the power and self-recognition that she discovered in a life dedicated to reading.
 
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cover of Rogues, Widows and Orphans: Mischief and Misadventures in the World of Books

Rogues, Widows and Orphans

Mischief and Misadventures in the World of Books

Rebecca Lee

Brandeis University Press, 2026

A publishing industry insider reveals the hilarious and fascinating mishaps, hoaxes, and gaffes behind your favorite books.

It’s a long journey from a writer’s mind to a finished book, and a lot needs to go right along the way. But isn’t it more interesting when things go wrong?

Rebecca Lee, a senior editorial manager at Penguin Random House, guides readers through the secrets of the book industry, a world fizzing with scandals, rivalries, catastrophes, and con jobs. Lee demonstrates how the tiniest of typos can have oversized consequences, unearths horrifying examples of bad taste and worse style, and peeks into tales of forgeries and feuds as dramatic as any thriller. She unredacts the most egregious cases of censorship, exposes hoarders and thieves, and asks whether AI is really an existential threat to the literary universe—or if we are our own worst enemies.

An irresistible tour of mistakes and misbehavior, Rogues, Widows and Orphans will make you cringe, crack you up, and renew your appreciation for the hard work of making books—and all the ways it can go sidewise.  

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