At one of America's oldest bookshops, there are just as many stories to be told outside the pages as in them. Join bookseller Kenneth Gloss and co-host Jordan Rich as they share entertaining conversations and histories surrounding Boston's favorite spot for bibliophiles.
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Today we’re taking a behind-the-scenes look at our recent appearance on CBS Saturday Morning. Host Dana Jabcobson toured the shop, interviewed Ken, and flipped through some of our favorite items—including one book that is truly priceless. We’ll talk about all the planning that goes into filming for a national TV show and answer some important questions (was Ken wearing makeup?) on this camera-ready new #brattlecast.
You can watch the full segment here.
We try not to get too political on this podcast, but, with proposed PBS funding cuts in the news, we thought it would be a good time to talk about all the positive impacts public television has had on the shop itself and on the wider community. The Brattle has a long history with our local PBS member station, WGBH. Ken’s father was contributing items from the shop to their annual fundraising auction back in the ‘60s—and bending the rules slightly to auction them off himself on-air. Ken and his wife, Joyce, both appraise books and manuscripts for Antiques Roadshow; in addition to being great publicity for the shop, the show has raised interest in rare books and collecting more generally.
We’ve benefitted so much from PBS over the years, but so has anyone who’s ever learned how to cook a new dish from Julia Child, let their toddler enjoy an enriching episode of Sesame Street, or gained a deeper appreciation of popular music from The Great American Songbook. You can find ways to support public broadcasting at protectmypublicmedia.org.
What makes a good book appraiser? Experience, a willingness to admit what you don’t know, and a way to get in touch with someone who does. Today we’re talking about the wide range of appraisals the Brattle gets involved in—from casual evaluations at the shop to written reports for tax or insurance purposes. It’s usually easy to tell when a book has only literary or sentimental value (and people are often surprisingly happy to hear it), but things get trickier when the books turn out to be valuable and rare. We’ll also talk about appraisals that miss the mark, including one for a signed (by someone) copy of a first (Canadian) edition of a classic American novel.
During the American Civil War, Walt Whitman left his bohemian life in New York City to volunteer at Union hospitals in Washington DC, spending time with wounded soldiers and distributing small gifts of fruit, paper, and money. To fund these efforts, the poet solicited charitable donations from his network of friends via letter, one of which we have in the studio with us today. Over its four pages he thanks the recipient for their gift of $75 (a substantial amount of money in 1864) and details overwhelming conditions at the hospitals as they received trainload after trainload of sick and injured men. The suffering and mass death he witnessed in the war—punctuated by quiet moments of courage and affection—would have a transformative impact on Whitman and his later work; these were, in his own words, “real, terrible, beautiful days!”
Today in the studio we have some unusual pre-postcard souvenirs: panoramic photographs of various cities and tourist sites, each folded into a booklike decorative binding. Published in the late 1800s—and in exceptionally good condition—these albums offer detailed bird’s-eye views of Denver, San Francisco, Chicago, and Salt Lake City, among other destinations. They’d make a great starting point for a larger collection, or a thoughtful gift for someone interested in one of these places, or in early photography. We’ll also reveal the one type of collection that Ken absolutely will not buy for the shop, plus the somewhat kitschy souvenir that he can’t seem to stop collecting.
