Vanishing treasures …

… The Old Curiosity Bookshop - Joseph Epstein, Commentary Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The bad news about the United States only gets worse. According to Jeff Deutsch, author of the recent In Praise of Good Bookstores, in 1994 there were 7,000 independent such shops in America; a quarter century later, that number had shrunk to 2,500, “and of those few bookstores left, even fewer sell books exclusively.” That was 2019. The number must be far lower today.