Jon ZobenicaThe Secret Lives of Used Books (The Revolt of Mamie Stover, by William Bradford Huie)This book hails from the Atlanta Public Library — a jewel of brutalism, the architectural style that reigned from the 1950s to the 1970s…May 12, 2023May 12, 2023
Jon ZobenicaThe Secret Lives of Used Books (The White Album, by Joan Didion)Stuart B. Schimmel was a bibliophile of some renown — a longtime member of New York’s Grolier Club and a man who, in 1961, commissioned the…May 4, 2023May 4, 2023
Jon ZobenicaThe Secret Lives of Used Books (Passages from the Diary of Samuel Pepys)Edward W. Johnson was born in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1894 or 1895, to a father from Norway and a mother from the Grand Duchy of Finland…Dec 2, 2022Dec 2, 2022
Jon ZobenicaThe Secret Lives of Used Books (The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)Oakland, California’s Montera Junior High School — founded in 1959, and from which this copy of The Call of the Wild came — was almost…Nov 28, 2022Nov 28, 2022
Jon ZobenicaThe Secret Lives of Used Books (The Heart of the Matter, by Graham Greene)The first line of Walter J. Johannsen’s obituary reads that he was “Born to Eternal Life on October 11, 2008, at the age of 78.” He did a…Nov 16, 2022Nov 16, 2022
Jon ZobenicaThe Secret Lives of Used Books (Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D. H. Lawrence)I’ve stumbled here either on an intriguing story, or on a series of coincidences that only make it seem that way. Several months ago, at a…Nov 12, 2022Nov 12, 2022
Jon ZobenicaThe Secret Lives of Used Books (Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, by Allan Gurganus)Nancy Sinclair, with her hummingbird bookplate, was presumably the original owner of this first edition of Allan Gurganus’s Oldest Living…Jan 7, 2022Jan 7, 2022
Jon ZobenicaThe Secret Lives of Used Books (Henderson the Rain King, by Saul Bellow)This copy of Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King somehow made its way from the library of Maria Assumpta College, in London, to a…Dec 9, 2021Dec 9, 2021
Jon ZobenicaWhiskey Foxtrot One-OneMy father was training to fight a war, but his real battle was with himselfNov 10, 2020Nov 10, 2020
Jon ZobenicaThe Secret Lives of Used Books (Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev)In the late 1980s, as the air slowly went out of the Cold War, and as Francis Fukuyama prepared to ask outright whether History had…Oct 22, 2020Oct 22, 2020
