I have been an avid reader for as long as I can remember, and bookstores have always been a source of wonder and excitement for me. When I was wandering the world with nary a possession but what could fit in my duffle bag, I could only carry one book at a time; however, when my wife and I settled in Greece to raise our family, we began to accumulate books. In Greece it was difficult to find enough high-quality English-language books to slake my appetite. We had access to a high school/college library, but it was small. A bookstore in town at a large shopping center had a fairly decent selection of English language titles, but these books were expensive. So whenever I’d make a trip to the States for whatever reason, I’d seek out used bookstores and browse for titles to bring back to Greece.

Times have changed. New and used books are so easy to find online these days that the number of physical bookstores has greatly diminished. I remember on one trip to Seattle more than a decade ago I walked a circuit of at least half a dozen used bookstores in the University District alone; now, though, only one of those bookstores remains. I’ve visited the iconic Strand bookstore on a visit to New York and the no-less-iconic Powell’s, which proclaims itself the world’s largest independent bookstore, in Portland. Bookstores are magical places from which you can extract portals that can carry you away to lands unknown.

Friss’s book is an ode to bookstores. He starts with Benjamin Franklin and his printing press, and then moves on to booksellers in the last few centuries. There are chapters on the Gotham Book Mart, the Strand, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon Books. There are also sections on Black-owned bookstores, sidewalk booksellers in New York, and independent bookstores. Throughout the text, Friss’s appreciation of the value of bookstores is obvious.

It would have been impossible, of course, to include more than a small sample of the bookstores that have helped shape American thought, and yet some of Friss’s choices puzzle me. In a stark contrast with the positive, vibrant tone of the rest of the book, he includes a chapter on the hate-filled Aryan Book Store, which appeared in Los Angeles before World War II to distribute Nazi propaganda. It injects a pall of darkness into what is otherwise an upbeat, hope-filled book. Also, it is the only west coast bookstore Friss focuses on. I had been looking forward to at least reading about the history of the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco and Powell’s Books in Portland. Instead, Friss concentrates on bookshops in Chicago and on the east coast. Maybe he’s planning a sequel. I hope so, because incomplete as it is, what he has shared about the history of U.S. bookstores is fascinating. I’ll take a bookstore or a library over an amusement park anytime, and I know a lot of other people feel the same way. After all, that’s where you have access to the true multiverse of the mind.