Unpacking My Father's Bookstore

Roth, Laurence

ISBN 10: 1978836600 / ISBN 13: 9781978836600

Published by Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 2025

About this Item

Printing not stated. Features: Bibliography, Dust Cover, Price on Product. Physical Info: 1.1" H x 8.6" L x 5.9" W (1.05 lbs) 330 pages. Price covers book wrapped in paper, then bubble wrapped, then secure ship in cardboard box w/track #. Thank you. Unpacking My Father's Bookstore brings to life the history of J. Roth / Bookseller of Fine & Scholarly Judaica, which was a microcosm of the Los Angeles Jewish community from 1966 to 1994 and one of the premier Jewish bookstores in the United States. Blending critical analysis with a personal account of growing up in his father's bookstore, and connecting both to larger forces that helped shape Jewish and American book retailing in the twentieth-century, Laurence Roth crafts a richly felt narrative about his family's Jewish experience in America. It is a reminder, too, that while most independent bookstores like J. Roth Bookseller disappear from history, these retailers often had outsized effects on their communities. Breaking with conventional modes of scholarship, Unpacking My Father's Bookstore tells a unique and troubled story that rarely gets told, one that is both personal and analytical, theoretical but rooted in the everyday. Table of Contents: Contents Sotheby's, Manhattan, 1985 1. Grand Opening ( objects) 2. The Inventory ( commerce) 3. The Storefront ( place) Greystone Park, New Jersey, 1935 4. The Second Store ( gender) 5. The Sales Floor ( collection) U.S.S.R., 1976 6. The Book-Lined Wall ( design) 7. The Shipping Room ( sound) 8. Collection's End ( networks) Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, 2021 Locations and Dates in Operation Acknowledgements Works Cited and Consulted.

Seller Inventory # 17911

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Unpacking My Father's Bookstore
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1978836600
• ISBN 13: 9781978836600
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New
• Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Seller catalogs:
  • New Book

About this title

Synopsis

Unpacking My Father’s Bookstore brings to life the history of J. Roth / Bookseller of Fine & Scholarly Judaica, which was a microcosm of the Los Angeles Jewish community from 1966 to 1994 and one of the premier Jewish bookstores in the United States. Blending critical analysis with a personal account of growing up in his father’s bookstore, and connecting both to larger forces that helped shape Jewish and American book retailing in the twentieth-century, Laurence Roth crafts a richly felt narrative about his family’s Jewish experience in America. It is a reminder, too, that while most independent bookstores like J. Roth Bookseller disappear from history, these retailers often had outsized effects on their communities. Breaking with conventional modes of scholarship, Unpacking My Father’s Bookstore tells a unique and troubled story that rarely gets told, one that is both personal and analytical, theoretical but rooted in the everyday.

About the Author

LAURENCE ROTH is the Charles B. Degenstein Professor of English and director of the Jewish & Israel Studies Program and The Build Collaborative at Susquehanna University, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Inspecting Jews: American Jewish Detective Stories (Rutgers University Press, 2003), and coeditor, with Nadia Valman, of The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Jewish Cultures.