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While on a mid-week visit to Antietam last April I noticed another guy touring the nearly deserted battlefield. He looked about my age and was dressed in the uniform of a musician from the Union Army. He noticed by the lettering on my van that I was a bookseller. He came over, introduced himself, and we started talking. His name was Steve Bartel, a graphic art designer, writer and drummer from Los Angeles. He was a reenactor who portrayed a “sheepskin fiddler” (drummer), and

Book Culture (formerly Labyrinth Books) 536 West 112th Street, New York, NY http://www.bookculture.com

I don’t mean to sound insensitive with the following account, but things like this happen in the world of house calls. My son was along on this one, to speed the work, for company, and you never know…he might consider this for a career some day. If there was a slim flicker of hope there, this visit may have snuffed it out. It was an old green and white house on a quiet outskirt city street, perched way up high with a long black iron railing along two flights of steps that wer

Original glossy newspaper file photo, measures 8” by 10”, rubber stamp on reverse reads, “Photographic Illustrations by Nick Lazarnick, 230 Park Ave., N.Y.,” pencil inscription on reverse reads “Harry Hansen about 1956,” Composition Room markings indicate size and placement in an unknown newspaper. As booksellers we are drawn to book backdrops, appearances of books in movies, etc. Before I had the calling I used to go to a book-lined bar in northern New Jersey called The Libr

Softcover music books can be surprisingly valuable, so I attended what was billed as a 1950s music store stock auction one nice Sunday not long ago. It turned out to be more of an accordion auction. Over 140 of them, in fact, all laid out on long tables. The mother-of-pearl of all accordion auctions. Some old ones, flat black with yellowing keys, but mostly somewhat newer, shiny black, red, blue, and white, small and big, starters and fancy models, mostly Italian-made. My gue

Flitted out of an old book and now slipped into the bottom corner of my monitor.

From the inside front cover of Essays on Property and Labour as Connected with Natural Law and the Constitution of Society by Francis Lieber (NY: Harper & Brothers, 1842).

Table of Contents Books About Bookselling: A Backward Look From the Editor The ABE Bookseller Ratings Deception Rare Book School: A Week Among Bright Bookish Minds The Price Guide Is Right (or Is It?) Judith Tingley of Meetinghouse Books and MARIAB A Book Dealer Visits Peru, or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation Ephemeral Assays: Self Listing Book Repair: Revelations, Decisions, and Disclosures The Pros and Cons of Amazon.com for Buyers and Sellers Joe Orlando of Fenwick Street