A Love Letter to Independent Bookstores
I’ve never seldom, met a bookstore (or book-selling venue) I didn’t like. I will happily browse through a big box store, a used bookstore, or the odd shelf of books in a flea market stall. In a strange town or foreign city, a bookstore visit will always make me happy, even if most of the books are in a language I can’t read. I’ve never come away from a library sale without an armload, or in the case of the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference annual book sale, several canvas bags full.* But independent book stores have a special place in my heart.
Heritage Books in Springfield, Missouri, was my first bookstore crush. It was a small store in a strip mall within walking of my house. In retrospect I realize that the selection was both small and eccentric, but at the time it seemed as bounteous as the Strand Bookstore in New York, which boasts eighteen miles of books. In some ways both the smallness and the eccentricity were to my benefit as a novice book buyer. On those rare occasions when I had some money to spend on a book, I gave in to the delights of serendipity, finding books I didn’t know existed.
Today I live in Chicago, which is home to fabulous independent bookstores. Once again, I’m lucky enough to live within walking distance of my favorite stores: the very academic Seminary Coop Bookstore and its more commercial sibling, 57th Street Books. I browse. I chat about books with booksellers. I eavesdrop on the bookish conversation of others. I check to see if my own books are on the shelves. I check to see if my friends’ books are on the shelves. I attend an occasional reading when the stars are in alignment. I resist the temptation to buy books I don’t need, because at this point I already own several hundred books I have not yet read. And I give in to the temptation to buy more books because with bookstores it’s a case of use them or lose them.
In the United States, the last Saturday of April is Independent Bookstore Day–a nationwide party for book lovers. (If you’re reading this the day it comes out, that’s tomorrow.) If you’re lucky enough to have an independent bookstore near you, stop by and show them some love. Me? I’ll be heading to 57th Street Books and the Seminary Coop with a wish list and an eye for a serendipitous find.
*Held each year on the weekend around Columbus Day. It’s a dangerous event. See you there?
History on Display: Beautiful Clothes and Ugly Actions
When I put a History on Display post on my calendar for today, I assumed I was going to write about the exhibit on Mainboucher: a boy from a modest background on Chicago’s West Side who became the first American-born couturier to make an international reputation. One of my sisters was coming for a long weekend and the spark for the entire visit was Making Mainboucher. The exhibit is worth a visit. The clothes are beautiful. Mainboucher’s life was full of interesting twists.* If you have any interest in fashion or even the social history of the second half of the twentieth century, it is worth a visit. But it is a small exhibit and I don’t have a lot to say about it.
From a history buff perspective, the winner of the day was the exhibit down the hall: Spies, Traitors, and Saboteurs. Subtitled Fear and Freedom in America, the exhibit looks at historical moments in which America has balanced the need for security with the need for civil liberties as a result of perceived threats from within its borders. (Perceived being the critical word in several of these cases.) The broad outlines of some, like the internment of Japanese residents in World War II, the McCarthy trials of the Cold War era, and the Oklahoma city bombing, are well known. Others are less familiar: the role of American Loyalists** in the British capture of Washington DC in the War of 1812, the destruction of a munitions depot in New York Harbor by German secret agents aided by American collaborators in 1916, the anarchist scare after World War I and the violent raids unleashed by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer in retribution.***
The exhibit is even-handed in its treatment of events that were often rooted in fear and hatred. The extremes of right and left are shown as equally ugly in their actions. Each event considered includes unexpected details. (The fact that J. Edgar Hoover was against Japanese internment on the grounds that his people had already found all the Japanese spies on the West Coast surprised me.) Interactive kiosks throughout the exhibit encourage the viewer to think about her own positions on the points where national security and civil liberty butt up against each other.
Spies, Traitors and Saboteurs is not an easy exhibit. (You might consider saving the Mainboucher exhibit as a mental palette cleanser.) It is an important one. The exhibit will be at the Chicago History Museum through October, 2017.
*Among other things, he designed uniforms for the Navy’s WAVES in World War II.
**In this case, still loyal to the British.
***Coming soon to a blog post near you.
Isabella of Castile: Europe’s First Great Queen
A while back I reviewed Sarah Gristwood’s Game of Queens, a wonderful account of the powerful women who ruled (directly or indirectly) in sixteenth century Europe. Giles Tremlett’s masterful biography of Isabella of Castile is in some ways the prequel to Gristwood’s account. Tremlett sums up the theme of his book in its sub-title: Europe’s First Great Queen.
Isabella of Castile opens with a vivid set piece: twenty-three-year-old Isabella marching through the streets of Segovia preceded by a knight carrying the royal sword. It was a symbol of power and of the will to use it. Isabella would prove to have both.
The odds were against her. When Isabella seized the throne after the death of her brother in December 1474, she inherited a weak monarchy and nobles accustomed to ruling their territories without reference to their feudal overlord. The powerful men who supported her questionable claim to the throne assumed her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon, would rule in her stead. Thanks to a prenuptial agreement, which she herself negotiated, Isabella governed Castile in her own right with Ferdinand as a trusted partner. Together they transformed Castile and Aragon from a congeries of medieval feudatories into a modern state with led by a powerful monarch. They also ended Spain’s long history of relative religious tolerance, with the creation of of the Spanish Inquisition and attacks on Muslims, Jews, and Christians of Muslim and Jewish descent
Tremlett paints a sympathetic picture of Isabella, without whitewashing the fact that she was often ruthless and intolerant, with a sense of realpolitik that rivaled that of Machiavelli. If you’re interested in tough broads in history, check out Isabella.
Most of this review appeared previously in Shelf Awareness for Readers.