Description
When Gary Goodman wandered into a rundown usedbook shop that was going out of business in East St Paul in 1982 he had no idea the visit would change his life He walked in as a psychiatric counselor and walked out as the stores new owner In The Last Bookseller Goodman describes his sometimes desperate sometimes hilarious career as a used and rare book dealer in Minnesota
Here we meet the infamous St Paul Book Bandit Stephen Blumberg who stole 24000 rare books worth more than fifty million dollars John Jenkins the Texas rare book dealer who probably was murdered while standing in the middle of the Colorado River and the eccentric Melvin McCosh who filled his dilapidated mansion with half a million books In 1990 with a couple of partners Goodman opened St Croix Antiquarian Books in Stillwater one of the Twin Cities regions most venerable bookshops until it closed in 2017
The internet changed the book business forever and Goodman details how after 2000 the internet made stores like his obsolete In the 1990s the Twin Cities had nearly fifty secondhand bookshops today there are fewer than ten As both a memoir and a history of booksellers and book scouts criminals and collectors The Last Bookseller offers an ultimately poignant account of the used and rare book business during its final Golden Age
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