Enterprise and Society Advance Access originally published online on January 15, 2009
Enterprise and Society 2009 10(1):225-227; doi:10.1093/es/khn111
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Laura J. Miller. Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption
Laura J. Miller. Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007. x + 316 pp. ISBN 0-226-52590-0, $35.00 (cloth); 0-226-52591-0, $20.00 (paper).
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Most of those in the book business have a tendency to regard their trade as being morally and intellectually set apart from other commercial activities. Many will have grown up with books, will have been shaped by them, inspired by them, perhaps even transformed by them. There is an almost evangelical fervor in some booksellers, as though they were members of a genteel version of the Salvation Army.
Any history of twentieth-century bookselling must take this factor
School of Advanced Study, University of London