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.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher & Google Play Podcasts.
It was a year of violent upheaval and exuberant social change: 1968. Ken takes us there through a unique collection of books, letters, photographs, magazines, newspapers, and more, all to do with this tumultuous time in American history. It's a great example of an unusual collecting style but also an eerie and inspiring mirror of our present moment.
They took advantage of improved communications technology to sell a plethora of affordable goods to consumers across the United States, put local merchants out of business, and opened scores of enormous distribution centers. Sound familiar? It's not who you think, unless you’re thinking of Sears and Roebuck. We've got their old catalogs, which today serve as a nostalgic time capsule and a beautifully illustrated guide to the economic history of the average American.
Ken talks handwritten journals and letters: what makes them valuable and how his team at the shop goes about researching them. We'll delve into a Caribbean voyage with a magical conclusion and a utopian community in bucolic West Roxbury, with a side trip to a certain famously far out festival of the late 1960's. Learn whether your journal might also have the 'write' stuff on this week's #brattlecast, an episode to write home about!
What goes through Ken's mind while he's doing his favorite thing (buying books)? This episode is all about the Brattle's buying process, from the first phone call to the packing and hauling. Learn why it's not very helpful to describe your collection as 'both fiction and nonfiction' and why flights of stairs are the bookseller's natural enemy. Also, for any Boston accent aficionados who may be listening, we have a delightful discussion of parking.
