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Flawed Policies Led To Disaster in Vietnam The tragedy is “It needn’t have happened!” say people who were on the scene during crucial years of early 1960s By: Ken Fermoyle It is hard to envision this book achieving the success or honors (Pulitzer, National Book Award) that Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie earned in the late 1980s. That is unfortunate. In many ways it offers more important insights into why, despite massive U.S. efforts, South Vietnam fell to the Communists

When I lived in St. Augustine, FL, I regularly attended the monthly antique dealer meetings, partly because I enjoyed the people and the food and partly because I enjoyed the Show and Tell portion of the meeting. Each dealer was encouraged to bring something from his/her antique shop that would be of interest to the other dealers, and we would try to guess what it was. This was my first encounter of a Palm Leaf Book, brought by another book dealer. A bit later I wanted to lea

As a first-timer at BEA, my initial reaction was: “This is great!” Coming on the heels of the L.A. Times Festival of Books (see Vol. 4, No. 2), held at UCLA a month earlier, it reinforced the feeling that reading and books (and selling them) still matter to a great many people. This euphoria quickly gave way to panic. How on earth could I, even with help from my wife/photographer, cover this huge event in the single day that circumstances allowed? “You can’t,” I told myself,

With all the financial pressures on Internet booksellers, from declining prices to shipping reimbursements which don’t quite cover the actual postage, it’s become more important than ever to be efficient. This is true even if you are a one-person shop, but even more so if you have paid employees. You can’t pay someone for fifteen minutes to ship one ten-dollar book and still make a profit. In my shop, much of the increase in efficiency has revolved around the use of bar codes

The Printer’s Row Book Fair is always an incredible event and, this year, again lived up to its reputation. It’s the Midwest’s largest outdoor book and author festival, which cannot be rivaled. Printer’s Row is great because it brings all the elements of the book world together; there are self-publishers, big name stores (Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, Borders) and the used and antiquarian dealers, as well as amazing authors. As a bookseller with booth space at this event it is

The 9th annual Cooperstown Antiquarian Book Fair was held this past June 28 at the Clark Sports Center in Cooperstown, New York. We had a full house again this year with dealers representing ten states and a multitude of collecting interests. The fair has now become an established yearly event in the final weekend of June in this beautiful and historic Catskill village of upstate New York. The fair was once again sponsored by the New York State Historical Association, which i

A gorgeous California Gold Country day provided the backdrop for the Third Annual GOLD RUSH BOOK FAIR, held on May 17, 2003, at the Nevada County Fairgrounds in Grass Valley California. The single day fair hours were 10am to 5pm. Holding the GRBF at the Nevada County Fairgrounds represented a change of venue, as the 2001 and 2002 Fairs were held at the Miners Foundry cultural Center in Nevada City. The venue change allowed for unlimited free parking, better lighting, better b

The 15th Annual San Diego Booksellers Association Open Air Book Fair was held on June 8th, 2003, with glorious sunny weather and about 7000 people roaming the booths of the 56 new and used booksellers, publishers, authors and literacy groups. Thanks are due to the volunteers from the San Diego Booksellers Association and from the Hillcrest Business Association, for the time they spent making sure the Book Fair went off smoothly. Sponsors of the Fair were Harcourt Trade Publis