Charming review of Margaretta Barton Colt’s memoir of her 30 years running the independent bookshop specializing in military topics called The Military Bookman: Martial Bliss.: The Story of The Military Bookman.. The quote in the post-title comes from one anecdote in the book, included in the review.
The bookshop closed in 2003. I went there a couple of times when I first arrived in New York (the Upper East Side was practically the suburbs, as far as I was concerned – it was way over THERE), but I loved the atmosphere of that bookshop, and also the mostly-male clientele who hung around. These guys knew books and knew what they were looking for. I was really into military strategy for a while there. I bought a John Keegan book at The Military Bookman, and inhaled it while I was in the midst of going to grad school. I will definitely be reading this memoir (I love bookish memoirs especially, but it’s wonderful that Colt has written this book, self-published it … It’s one of the real casualties of the Internet age, the vanishing of special places like The Military Bookman.)
That Op Cit is pretty prolific too. D’you suppose Op is short for Ophelia? Weird how you never actually see her stuff in the stacks, seeing as there’s so much of it.