The feminist revolution of the 1970s embraced a deceptively simple proposition: "The personal is political." It's a short phrase with sweeping implications. Issues that had previously been considered private matters were suddenly opened up to their wider, social implications. When a woman is defined simply as a housewife or homemaker,...

An idea has taken root in certain quarters that publishers aren't necessary any more. And for that matter, who needs bookstores? According to this facile argument, publishers and bookstores are both relics of the pre-internet days and just get in the way of writers and readers.

Why not just...

The record of the Anti-trust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice over the last 40 years has been a sorry one. Sometimes it goes after companies that have done nothing wrong, but more often it lets big-time antitrust violators get away with murder. In a recent case -- one...

What if a book isn't like a record?

Commentators outside the book business usually pose the issue in the reverse. Books, they claim, are just like music records and CDs. And since information in a book can be downloaded into an e-book in the same way that music can...

In early January Frommer Guides arranged for a New Orleans literary group to lead a band of booksellers on a "Literary Pub Crawl" of the Big Easy. The guide's spiel got more and more colorful after each watering hole. When asked about local eccentrics, he responded thus:

There are...

Carl Lennertz has a new job.

As anyone who knows him would have predicted, Carl's job isn't an easy one. His immodest goal is to revolutionize the way Americans look at books.

We've known Carl since forever. At various times he has been our main point of contact at...

Browsing in a bookstore is one of the world's greatest forms of entertainment. The price is right, the pace is leisurely, the resources are unmatched, your fellow browsers are usually thoughtful, and the intellectual stimulation is endless. Many people never get tired of it. My wife and I own a...

The Birthright Act that is being considered by the new G.O.P. majority in Congress may force us all back to the Old Country -- that is, if we can find it.

A few years ago I was on a motor launch in the Bay of Naples and struck up a...

E-books arrived at America's bookstores on December 6, 2010, with the announcement that Google eBooks would be sold through independent bookstores. My own bookstore -- Book Passage in Northern California -- is one of these stores. The news about e-books was welcomed by booksellers with hope, excitement, and a little...

The day after Amazon.com abruptly terminated its Associates Program in Colorado, the Colorado chapter of the advocacy group ProgressNow, announced, "We won't be bullied." The group called on its 200,000 members to boycott Amazon.com, claiming that Amazon's action was just a stunt to deprive Colorado of much needed...

The people who run the food-industrial complex must get a special case of the shakes whenever a new Michael Pollan book is published. By now, the princes of processed food have probably realized that there is no way they can win an argument with him. Anyone who reads Pollan's new...

Sometimes the evidence of economic disaster is right in front of your eyes, but you can't see how all the pieces fit together. Then a book comes along to explain things, and suddenly everything meshes.

Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction is that kind of...

If you're looking for a copy of Richard North Patterson's Degree of Guilt, Stephen Coonts' Deep Black, Ben Bova's Able One, or Jackie Collins' Drop Dead Beautiful, don't look on Amazon.com. The same is true if you're planning to read about An End to Al-Qaeda by Malcolm Nance or dig...

This is Part Two of a multi-part series on publishing. Part One of this article can be found at No one warned the Dinosaurs. Will Anyone Warn the Publishers?

The major publishers have gone from being the dominant players in the book business to a point where they can...

When the dinosaurs were in the midst of their demise, did they have any idea they were facing extinction? If they knew, could they have changed course?

There are many people inside the major publishing houses -- those, at least, who have survived the industry lay-offs of the last few...

Former Vice-President Al Gore had just finished speaking in San Rafael, California, on November 9, 2009, about his new book Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. The 800 people in Domincan University's Angelico Hall - along with the over-flow crowd of 200 listening by...

The U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 was drafted for the purpose of eliminating racial discrimination in employment, but it was amended during the Congressional debate to prohibit discrimination against women as well. However, as N.Y. Times columnist Gail Collins points out in her brilliant new book, that amendment...

What looks like a simple price war between Amazon, Target, and Walmart over a handful of bestsellers is symptomatic of a much deeper problem in the book business. The larger fight is really over what you get to read.

The price war began Oct 15 when Walmart.com dropped its prices...

Nicholas Kristof's and Sheryl WuDunn's new book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide is the kind of book that could change the course of history.

In the West, it's often easy to assume that the battle for women's rights has largely been won (an assumption,...