As for book events, I have done them at B&N stores in Bethesda and Rockville here in Maryland, and they all involved the traditional book talk plus signing. I have seen people (at Books-A-Million, I think) doing the sort of camping-out that you describe, and it seemed a pretty poor idea.

As for the world without B&N, it might not be so bad, but I tend to think it would be pretty bad. I believe that no more than 20% of the Borders locations have been “repurposed” as book stores (independents and the aforesaid Books-a-Million). A survey found that one-third of the people buying books at book stores had not intended to buy a book when they stopped in. That’s a lot of sales that might never happen if there are a lot fewer stores to stop in to.

My own (limited) experience of doing book events at Barnes & Noble stores has been disastrous. Their idea of a book event is an author standing near a table with a few books, talking to people as they walk by. This is one area in which independents, in my experience, are far far better.

If we imagine a world without Barnes & Noble, some of those spaces would become other book stores, and other book stores would be easier to start / maintain. But would it affect the overall $ spent by people on books? I doubt it, although it would probably accelerate the move from physical to electronic books.

I’m sorry for the loss of your friend, who sounds like someone I would have liked to know.

We are so looking forward to reading American Emperor!

Things are very busy here but we hope to be there when you’re on Hudson St.

Love, C.

On the whole, I agree with you on both the reasons for the current economic mesh not just in Europe but worldwide, and the solutions for the same. However, as a professional genealogist, I have a bit different perspective of the same. Whenever I have looked at past events with an intent to understand not just what happened, but why, I frequently find that history books rarely answer the latter question, at least to my satisfaction.

A good example is how Wyatt Earp is treated, typically as either the architypical U.S. Marshall portrayed by Hugh O’Brien in the TV series, or an early version of the “Dirty Harrry Callahan”, the character made famous by Clint Eastwood. The latter position has as its earliest proponent a man named William Breakenridge who was a Deputy Sheriff in Tombstone while Wyatt was a marshall there. That Breakenridge actually knew, and at least in theory, worked with Earp as they were fellow “policemen”, would seem to give credence to his account, particularly since it is the most detailed account by a contemporary of Earp (other contemporary accounts are only of specific incidents).

I qualify “worked together” because as Marshall and Sheriff, Earp and Breckenridge were as much, if not more so, rivals as coworkers. Sheriff is an elected, local, office, while Marshall is federal and appointed, with Wyatt appointed at a time when one implicitly had to be a loyal adherent of, if not contributor to, the party of the then President, Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican who was the first President who did not win a majority of the popular vote. Most Republicans came from the “North” (Earp was born in Illinois, raised in Iowa) and had likely served in the Union Army (Wyatt was himself too young to have fought, but brothers Virgil, Jim and Morgan received pensions for their Union service). Most of the people who settled in Arizona came from the states of the former Confederacy (Breckenridge was from Kentucky, the Clantons from Texas), so had likely served in the Confederate Army (Breckenridge and the Clantons all had), and voted Democrat. Oh, yes, Wyatt’s wife had previously been the “girl friend” of Breckenridge’s boss, Johnny Boehm, so Breckenridge’s dislike of Earp was highly politically motivated. And when one looks at what happened in Tombstone in the early 1880s from that perspective, as a struggle between two rival politcal camps, EVERYTHING that happened actually makes sense!

I can offer still other examples, but the point is if we don’t do a better job of studying history, we are DOOMED to repeat the same mistakes our ancestors did!