Customer Reviews

Book Row: An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade

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Reading Mondlin and Meador's descriptions of the long-gone used-book emporia that once graced Fourth Avenue in New York City both depressed and exhilarated me. Depressed, because I'll never have a chance to browse their musty aisles crowded with books. Exhilarated, because this volume successfully captures the thrill of browsing that I've experienced at the Strand bookstore (the sole Book Row survivor) and a few other stores. It's too bad the mindset of our culture has shifted to one in which an intelligent pleasure like browsing for good, cheap used books--in person, in a physical store--has been marginalized. Yes, Web bookbuying has its advantages, but still...I feel something precious has been lost.

It is refreshing to read books written by bibliophiles who express a true appreciation for fine books. They are true literary aesthetes. I've never known scholars or even poets to express such a love of books. Reading "Book Row" has inspired me to acquire more of the classics in fine editions. I think the authors were a little too dismissive of the Internet which has been a tremendous help to me in finding rare books. I no longer have to settle for what I find on the shelves in bookstores with bad taste in books. I can always find exactly what I want to read. The Internet is the greatest bookman there ever was!

I have to admit I'm divided on this book. As a 4-5 block slice of New York City history, it's thoroughly researched and reported and many times engaging, with some real characters from a decidedly off-center cache. And as an insider's look at a burgeoning book trade with more book shelves per square block than we're ever likely to see again (sadly), I found it in turn wistfully nostalgic in both the descriptions of dead booksellers and quotes from the ones still alive, and elegiac in its ruminations on the sad state of our post-Book Row culture.

The problem is, each of the things I liked about it work against it as well. Its narrow scope is problematic, at least within the framework Meador and Mondlin use, with many of the chapters seeming a lot like the ones before them with the names changed and a lot of factual repetition. And the nostalgia can get a little overbearing, with a pretty strong Neo-Luddite bias toward internet book dealers ("Those who had the books and the know-how might buy and sell books on the Net, but we'd like to hear Peter Stammer's, Sam Dauber's, and Jack Biblo's views of them as secondhand book dealers"). You could also say that as estate book buyer for the Strand Meador's neutrality might come into question, and you wouldn't be disproved with chapter titles like "The Strand Lives On" and almost a third of the glossy pictures devoted to the Bass family that runs the Strand.

In sum I'd say this is a book for book-industry specialists (especially the older ones who might recognize more of the names the authors drop without much historical grounding) and book buffs with enough interest to sift through 400 pages that could have easily been 200. I fall more into the latter than the former, but even then would recommend Chapters One, Two, Five, Nine, Eleven, Fourteen, Fifteen, the Appendix (a cool little pre-Book Row history of books in NYC), and the foreword by legendary book collector Madeleine B. Stern.

This is a wonderful attempt to look at the century and a quarter of the world of Books,Bookstores,Booksellers,Book Buyers,Rare Book Collectors,Just Plain Avid Readers,The Normal as well as the Eccentric;but all Bibliophiles in one form or another; and what took place in Book Row of New York.What an amazing world it was, and a world that we are not likely to see again. While a street or section occupied by bookstores is not unique to New York,this was one of the most famous in the world. There still places where there are collections of bookstores,even some "Book Villages" that have a nostalgic ring to what Boor Row was,;but Book Row ,and all involved, was the real thing.
Most of what is talked about in this book went on long before my time as an avid reader,but I can still appreciate what a thrill it must have been to be a regular visitor to this place.
I think that the real value in reading this book is to see how greatly the whole experience of buying and selling of books,be they new,used,rare,expensive,cheap,or whatever;has changed so much and so quickly.About 25 or so years ago,when I seriously searched out books for my collection ,I visited literally hundreds of bookstores,particularly the Used & Rare ,and encountered a wide array of stores and sellers,and what a thrill to find a store that I had never been in;and find a new "treasure".Even when not finding anything,the bookseller and the store was still an experience.
However;what I used to call "going book sailing" is nothing what it used to be and many of the stores I used to haunt are "gone with the wind".I guess for the same reasons as with Book Row. The rents kept rising,buildings were demolished for highrises and condos,the Booksellers became old and didn't change with the rapidly changing world of books,the newer sellers who entered the trade have become a totally different breed,the Internet has changed everything and made an unbelievably amount of books and information about books available to any Book Lover,regardless of where he lives or what means are at his disposal.So,one by one the conventional bookstores have just withered and faded away.The price of gas has also made it expensive to run around the country to various bookstores.
The publishers are still churning out massive numbers of new titles ,reissues and books at such a rate that there are books everywhere,and at prices that vary all over the map;both for new and used books. For instance,many charities and university alumni groups have seen where they can obtain unlimited amounts of donations of books of every type and along with them lots of volunteers to sort,price and sell them to raise funds.These sales attract huge crowds,who make excellent finds. The curious thing is that a lot of the small time dealers are there scooping up books to sell on the Internet,at obviously much higher prices,and have become the buyers competitor rather than friend.In this book, the authors allude to the fact that many of the booksellers couldn't or wouldn't change and learn to buy and sell ,or otherwise,merchandise their books to retain their customers. The charities and others,changed the whole game,and greatly to the benefit of the buyers.If that wasn't a great enough deathnell;the Internet makes virtually any book one wants ,readily available at whatever,cost,rarity ,condition,etc. the buyer desires.No longer is it a matter of 'take what I got, at my price,or Good Luck".So,this book sure shows what the book world used to be;and what a wonderful world it was;but all that is a thing of the past.
Of all the great quotes you'll find in this book,and there are many;I think the quote that is most apropos is by someone who is not even a bookseller,book buyer or any kind of a Bibliophile ,and is found on page 365.

"Considering the long-ago past and eras that are gone with the wind on wings of time will seem a waste to those who dismiss ancient history as "weary,stale,flat and unprofitable." Baseball manager Sparky Anderson pointed out the futility of living in the past: "There's no future in it." A New York book dealer,quoted by the "New York Times" (May 31,1981),...and that was over 25 years ago...doubted the existence of serious interest among contemporary booksellers in the vanished shops of Fourth Avenue,which were no longer revalent to the needs and problems of modern bookstores: Those who remember them don't want to be reminded,and those who don't,won't care.It's like talking about a five-cent sandwich.No one knows what you are talking about."
Bibliophiles should give a big clap and thanks,to Marvin Mondlin and Roy Meador for bringing Book Row to those who have to be resolved with,"oh well,it was before my time,and so was the 25-cent bleacher seat and the 5-cent soda".

In the last couple of decades of the 19th century and the first few decades of the 20th century, New York City was home to a series of legendary booksellers who did business on and around Fourth Street south of Fourteenth Street. It came to be called "Book Row" by dedicated bibliophiles and had its own very distinctive culture, aromas, and for the true book lover, an excitement that could not be duplicated in the same quantity, quality, or diversity in any other American city of the time. In Book Row: An Anecdotal And Pictorial History Of The Antiquarian Book Trade, authors Marvin Mondlin and Roy Meador have collaborated to provide a definitive and enthusiastically recommended history of the times and personalities that made Book Row the Mecca for book collectors in search of antiquarian treasures, as well as budget bookaholics looking for something interesting to read.

This book was a dull disappointment because the authors (one of whom is a book buyer for the landmark Strand Bookstore) are very poor historians. I had hopes of Book Row providing a glimpse into the past of the Manhattan neighborhood in which I live and a window into long-gone independently owned bookstores. It was instead a flood of trivial names and dates that provided very little context or description, and consequently very little to fuel understanding or the imagination.

The book is mostly an endless series of abstract, biographical sketches of the booksellers--mainly names and dates with a light peppering of anecdotes that are at most mildly amusing. The authors show no insight or analysis of what made these individuals become proprietors of bookstores and personal bookbuyers for wealthy collectors (who are also inadequately described). It is possible that evidence of only these factual bare bones have survived, but it is then the task of the historian to flesh these out with a picture of the time and place to which these facts belong. Book Row fails to do this because the authors are too content with name-dropping: a particular noted actor shopped at a certain store, a wealthy collector (of whom nothing further is said) praised a bookbuyer as the best. Lists of names are frequently given when they provide absolutely no informational or narrative value.

This is a book about independent Manhattan bookstore owners in the early 20th century that fails to reveal anything concrete about what it meant to own a store at that time, or what the character of the neighborhood or its residents were. The reader gets the exact price of how much a particular rare volume procured at auction, but not a picture of where these auctions took place or how they proceeded, or a perspective on how important individual books or book collections were to these auctions. Similarly, the authors often provide street addresses of stores, yet fail to describe the buildings themselves. Missing are such basic facts such as whether a bookstore at a given time was likely to have had modern electric lighting or gas light, or even who owned the building or what the rent was likely to have been. All of these flaws, of style as well as research, made reading Book Row rarely more educational or entertaining than browsing the "Bookstores-Used" section of an old yellow pages.