Clearance

A wry, unvarnished chronicle of a career in the rare book trade--now in paperback

When Gary Goodman wandered into a run-down, used-book 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 store's new owner. In The Last Bookseller Goodman describes his sometimes desperate, sometimes hilarious career as a used and rare book dealer in Minnesota--the early struggles, the travels to estate sales and book fairs, the remarkable finds, and the bibliophiles, forgers, book thieves, and book hoarders he met along the way.

Here we meet the infamous St. Paul Book Bandit, Stephen Blumberg, who stole 24,000 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 Lake Minnetonka 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 region's most venerable bookshops until it closed in 2017. This store became so successful and inspired so many other booksellers to move to town that Richard Booth, founder of the "book town" movement in Hay-on-Wye in Wales, declared Stillwater the First Book Town in North America.

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.

On April 15, 2018, seven prisoners were slaughtered and twenty-two seriously injured during a prison riot in South Carolina. This incident, prison conditions and mass incarceration were the inspiration for this book, Letters to Our Sons, which represents five years of research. Authors Dawn Simmons and Heru Mossiah Maat collaborated with over 80 prisoners from behind the steel fences of maximum security prisons in South Carolina and throughout the United States. These prisoners have "stepped up" in an effort to bring awareness to the mass incarceration of our youth in the United States of America. From their personal and collective experience, they use powerful heart-wrenching candid narratives to highlight that prison is a place of mental destruction, violence, poor living conditions and poor quality food. These incarcerated men also acknowledge that more adult males and teenage boys enter the prison system than those who enter college as well as lament that young men enter the prison system by the truck loads as if there were no other options. In response, these prisoners who are convicted burglars, drug dealers, rapists and murderers from diverse backgrounds hope to make a positive difference by telling their story.

Dawn Simmons and Heru Mossiah Maat have written a must read, tell all book. Letters to Our Sons describes the circumstances that have led many men to prison, the prison living conditions, and the frustration and dehumanization, which breeds violence within prison walls. For further insights about the current prison system, criminal justice activists, former and current correctional staff, and police officers provided their narratives, opinions and advice especially about hope for the future. Through infographics, research and essays, the book will educate readers about the truths of prison life.

In Letters to Our Sons, over 80 prisoners found the strength and courage to reveal their true wisdom and vulnerability in order to change the direction of future criminal justice and prison legislation. Most importantly, they hope to intervene in our children's lives before it is too late.