May 12The 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. Owing to legendary southern efficiency, however, this iteration of the APL didn’t open its doors until 1980, almost ten years after the design was floated and…Secret Lives Used Books5 min readSecret Lives Used Books5 min read
May 4The 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 engraver and typographer Reynolds Stone to make him a personalized bookplate. Stone produced many such in his day, including one for the Queen Mum…Joan Didion3 min readJoan Didion3 min read
Dec 2, 2022The 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 (then a part of the Russian empire). The June 1915 issue of Northwestern Druggist: A Progressive Journal for Retail Druggists has Johnson relocated just…Samuel Pepys4 min readSamuel Pepys4 min read
Nov 28, 2022The 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 named Jack London Junior High. A parent-teacher association initially proposed three options: Montera Junior High, Jack London Junior High, and Pineview Junior High. But before…Jack London4 min readJack London4 min read
Nov 16, 2022The 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 lot better than the hero of Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, which Johannsen bought on August 30, 1948, the year…Graham Greene5 min readGraham Greene5 min read
Nov 12, 2022The 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 used bookstore in Marina, California, I got a copy of D. H. Lawrence’s complete/unexpurgated Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a copy loaded with the things that…D H Lawrence4 min readD H Lawrence4 min read
Jan 7, 2022The 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 Confederate Widow Tells All. But without knowing her middle name, and without any other clues about, say, her age, her race, her location, I’m faced with an entire internet’s worth…Allan Gurganus4 min readAllan Gurganus4 min read
Dec 9, 2021The 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 secondhand shop in Carmel, California. Tracing the book’s history led to stories as strange and wonderful as the novel itself. Maria Assumpta College was a Catholic…Saul Bellow5 min readSaul Bellow5 min read
Nov 10, 2020Whiskey Foxtrot One-OneMy father was training to fight a war, but his real battle was with himself [Originally appeared in the Winter 2019 American Scholar.] My father, Ron Zobenica, had been a fighter pilot in the Marines, and his stories were filled with place names that, through repetition and association, took on…Naval Aviation20 min readNaval Aviation20 min read
Oct 22, 2020The 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 reached its end, I found myself sampling the Russian masters, the most contemporary of whom (i.e., the one with the most modern sensibility) seemed to…Ivan Turgenev3 min readIvan Turgenev3 min read
