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Now What! Tales from the Annals of a San Francisco Bookseller

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Many a book lover has harbored a secret ambition to own his own bookstore. Tro Harper has been there and done that and has written a warm and engaging book about it. The end of World War II signaled a change of direction for Harper. Packing away his Marine Corps uniform and abandoning his pre-war career in broadcasting, he made the somewhat drastic decision to become a bookseller. "Now What!" tells tthe story of how he found the location - on San Francisco's Powell Street (for a time there was a second store on Market Street as well) - and stocked it and learned the trade of a retail merchant. The book details the early difficulies and deals with the author's relations with customers, staff, and particularly with publishers' representatives and their efforts to induce him to carry their wares. Harper's previous book about San Francisco included tales of the cable cars which rattled up and down outside the Powell Street ddors of his book store. In "Now What!" his unpretentious good natured anecdotes will amuse the general reader and instruct those other wannabe bookstore proprietors.