2010 Bookseller Resource Guide
At Fine Books & Collections, we believe a book (and a book review) remains timeless. For your enjoyment, we've posted online most of the reviews found in Fine Books from recent years.
Sort By: By Title |  By Author |  By Date   ||    More Reviews...   1     2     3     4     5     6  
Reluctant Capitalists
Reluctant Capitalists
Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption
By By Laura Miller

I once visited a rare bookstore in which I couldn’t buy a book. Not for a lack of trying: I brought nearly a dozen books to the counter, where the owner momentarily glanced at each volume and said, “That’s not for sale.” Selling books is like no other retail business. Even after hundreds of years, there is still a debate: Is a book another saleable commodity, or is it something more?

[read more]
The Secret of Lost Things
The Secret of Lost Things
By By Sheridan Hay
Sheridan Hay’s debut novel chronicles a year in the life of Rosemary Savage, a young woman who, in the wake of her mother’s death, moves to New York City, lands a job at the Arcade (a used and antiquarian bookstore modeled on the Strand), and finds herself an unwitting pawn in the quest for a lost manuscript novel by Herman Melville. [read more]
The Book of Lost Books
The Book of Lost Books
An Incomplete History of all the Great Books You’ll Never Read
By By Stuart Kelly
Have you ever said to yourself, “So many books, so little time?” Most avid readers and collectors have expressed a version of this sentiment at least once. Stuart Kelly, in his Book of Lost Books, lets us off the hook for the thousands of works that have been lost, destroyed, or never finished since several millennia before Christ, when “accountants in Mesopotamia” first incised cuneiform inventories of livestock on little clay tablets. [read more]
A Reading Diary
A Reading Diary
A Passionate Reader’s Reflections on a Year of Books
By Alberto Manguel
In the international army of belles lettres, Buenos Aires native Alberto Manguel is general of the bibliographical division. He is a Renaissance bibliophile: essayist, storyteller, collector of tales, champion of good books in any language, and author of two masterpieces on the modern book, A History of Reading (1996) and The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (1980). [read more]
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Writer and Printer
By James N. Green and Peter Stallybrass
It is too often the case that scholars and librarians do not talk to one another, let alone collaborate. Happily, Benjamin Franklin: Writer and Printer is an exception. Originally conceived as an exhibition catalog, this work sets a new standard for that category. James Green, librarian of the Library Company of Philadelphia, and Peter Stallybrass, an English professor at the University of Pennsylvania, weave a detailed exposition of Franklin’s work as a writer and a printer around 150 full-color images of books, engravings, and manuscripts. [read more]
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant
A Bibliography
By Marie Ellen Kelsey
The new reference work on Ulysses S. Grant by Marie Ellen Kelsey, an assistant professor at the College of St. Scholastica, a small, private university in Duluth, Minnesota, is the latest volume in the Bibliographies of the Presidents of the United States series. Grant’s canon of primary works is small. He wrote his celebrated Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant in 1885, some government reports, and precious little else. The vast bulk of the 4,242 items profiled in Kelsey’s work are secondary sources, biographies, journal and magazine articles, and so on. [read more]
Book Talk
Book Talk
Essays on Books, Booksellers, Collecting, and Special Collections
By Edited by Robert H. Jackson and Carol Z. Rothkopf
No book has elicited as much passion among our reviewers as Book Talk. While we were still trying to decide to whom, among many contenders, we should assign the review, two eminently qualified people sent in passionate commentaries. They offered informed and enthusiastic opinions, sometimes atonally disagreeing with each other. So we followed the book’s lead. An anthology of essays deserves an anthology of reviews. We present two opinions by reviewers from different fields. Rick Ring is a rare-book librarian and William Butts is a longtime antiquarian bookseller. Both are devoted collectors and bibliophiles. —Pasco Gasbarro, Book Review Editor
[read more]
Penguin By Design
Penguin By Design
A Cover Story, 1935–2005
By Phil Baines
Penguin Books turned seventy in 2005, and this attractive volume celebrates its strong design tradition across the decades and gives a brief history of how the company's editorial and design visions have been intertwined. Graphic designer Phil Baines organizes the story around five major time periods, the first three of which bear the stamp of founder Allen Lane's strong hand and excellent taste. Color images of more than 600 covers reinforce the text, giving it more the feel of an exhibition catalog than a history. [read more]
Chip Kidd: Work 1986–2006, Book One
Chip Kidd: Work 1986–2006, Book One
By Chip Kidd
You know Chip Kidd, even if you don't know it. He's a living legend in the world of designers, publishers, and authors. You can't avoid him. Walk into any bookstore, and you'll be overwhelmed by his work as your eyes scan the shelves. He's even been the subject of a question on Jeopardy. A: "His work at Alfred A. Knopf made Chip Kidd a superstar in designing these." Q: "What are book covers?" [read more]
John Masefield
John Masefield
The Greak Auk of English Literature
By Philip W. Errington
Before you think Philip Errington terribly unkind in comparing the subject of his mammoth bibliography to a great auk, described by Webster's as "any of several black and white short-necked diving seabirds that breed in colder parts of the northern hemisphere," take note that he has instead shrewdly borrowed John Masefield's comparison of himself to this mutant penguin. [read more]
More Reviews... 1      2    3    4    5    6