Boswell presents an evening with Jeff Deutsch for an in-person event celebrating the release of In Praise of Good Bookstores. For this event, Deutsch will be in conversation with Boswell proprietor Daniel Goldin.

Advance registration for the in-person event has ended. A limited number of walk-up registrations available.

Broadcast registration is still available.

In the age of one-click shopping, this is no ordinary defense of bookstores, but rather an urgent account of why they are essential places of discovery, refuge, and fulfillment that enrich the communities that are lucky enough to have them. The question has been asked, though we have our own opinion: Do we need bookstores in the twenty-first century? If so, what makes a good one? Deutsch pays loving tribute to one of our most important and endangered civic institutions. He considers how qualities like space, time, abundance, and community find expression in a good bookstore. Along the way, he also predicts - perhaps audaciously - a future in which the bookstore not only endures, but realizes its highest aspirations.

In exploring why good bookstores matter, Deutsch draws on his lifelong experience as a bookseller, and also his upbringing as an Orthodox Jew. This spiritual and cultural heritage instilled in him a reverence for reading as an essential part of a meaningful life. Central among Deutsch’s arguments for the necessity of bookstores is the incalculable value of browsing - since, when we are deep in the act of looking at the shelves, we move through space as though we are inside the mind itself, immersed in self-reflection.

Jeff Deutsch is Director of Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstores, which in 2019 he helped incorporate as the first not-for-profit bookstore whose mission is bookselling.

Click here to order your copy of In Praise of Good Bookstores. We recommend purchasing the book in advance.

If you'd like to watch the event virtually, we're planning to broadcast it on Zoom Webinar. A link will be sent out on the day of the event.

Please note that we're only allowing two people to register on one email so that we can keep registered folks aware of any changes to this event.