Nicholas Basbanes, A Gentle Madness, Holt, NY, 1996

Basbanes demonstrates that bibliomania is far from being a 'gentle obsession' and has resulted in the building of some of the world's great libraries, often by less than honorable means. He explores the great and legendary library of Alexandria, the libraries of Jefferson, Folger, and others, as well as libraries of gifted amateurs whose collections have, at least once, preserved the entire genre of literature. A witty, informative, and vastly entertaining look at bibliomania.

Joan Bodger, How the Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the British Sources of Children's Books, c. 1959, reprinted by McClelland and Stewart, 1999

An engaging first person tour of the British landscapes made famous children's literature. Bodger set out with her family to discover the specific sites that inspired A. A. Milne's Hundred Acre Wood, Beatrix Potter's gardens and woodlands, the mythical Camelot and other settings made famous in this literary genre.

Martha Cooley, The Archivist, 1998

An aging archivist, the letters of T. S. Eliot, not to be opened till 2019, and a passionate graduate student are the dominate figures in this first novel of books, the inner life, and passion.

F. J. Harvey Darton, Children's Books in England (Revised 3d edition)

A seminal work on children's literature in England, the text ends up being "a chronicle of the English people in their capacity of parents, guardians, and educators of children. Literature was his central theme, but through it Darton wove biography and the facts of social and commercial history, and when Children's Books in England was published it proved to be a work whose insights and authority transformed our understanding of its subject."

John Dunning, Booked to Die

John Dunning, Bookman's Wake

A book, a bookstore, a murder, and a tough cop who loves books: and weaving in and out of these thrillers are real life rare books; the books that scouts might kill for, that collectors might die for.

Estelle Ellis, Caroline Seebohm, Christopher Simon Sykes, At Home With Books, How Booklovers Live With and Care for Their Libraries

At Home With Books is about booklovers--forty of them--and the very personal, diverse libraries created for the passion they share. They show that reading rooms and creative ideas for housing volumes can turn any room in the house into a library.

Charles Everitt, Adventures of a Treasure Hunter

The New Yorker noted that Everitt's "book is a succession of true stories about the intriguing and slightly larcenous art of buying cheap and selling dear..." Over fifty years of bookselling experience and observations make for lively reading.

Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone, Used and Rare, Travels in the Book World

The Goldstone's first discovery and exploration of the world of book collecting, as they embark on a love affair with and addition to books.

Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone, Slightly Chipped, Footnotes in Booklore

n this follow-up to Used and Rare, the Goldstones delve further into the world of book collecting, tracking down author notes, bidding on leather covered books at Sotheby's, and even explore bookcollecting via the Inernet.

Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading

Considering reading to be the "most civilized of all passions , Manguel explores the 6000 year-old conversation between words and the magician without whom the book would be a lifeless object: the reader. He lingers over reading as seduction, as rebellion, as obsession, and goes on to trace the story of the reader's progress from clay tablet to scroll, codex to CD-ROM.

Larry McMurtry, Cadillac Jack.

Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop

Christopher Morley, Parnassus on Wheels

Artura Perez-Reverte, The Club Dumas

"Fallen angels, satanic manuals, and a passion for the works of Raphael Sabatini and Alexandre Dumas among others--this is the stuff of Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte's engrossing novel The Club Dumas. Set in a world of antiquarian booksellers where dealers would gladly betray their own mothers to get their hands on a rare volume, The Club Dumas is a thinking person's thriller: in addition to a riveting plot, the book is full of intriguing details that range from the working habits of Alexandre Dumas to how one might go about forging a 17th-century text. Woven through these meditations is enough murder, sex, and the occult to keep both the hero, Lucas Corso, and the reader hopping." (Amazon.com book review)

Alan Powers, Living With Books

Books. You read them, own them, collect them, even horde them, and your quickly diminishing bookshelf space demands that you find new and creative ways to store and display them. Living With Books addresses all the challenges and joys of a home masquerading as a library.

Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern, Old Books, Rare Friends; Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passion

As the Los Angeles Times Book Review noted, "Rrostenberg and Stern's book is a restrained, highly intelligent memoir . . . .of an unusual passion for and knowledge of old books. How splendid to read about bibliophiles," close friends, and antiquarian bookselling.

Konstantinos Sp. Staikos, The Great Libraries, From Antiquity to the Renaissance

A lavishly illustrated study in the "development of books and libraries, from the time when people first started collecting works of literature, tracing the parallel development of written literature with the foundation of royal, public and private libraries."

Lynne Tillman, preface by Woody Allen, Bookstore: The Life and Times of Jeanette Watson and Books & Co. about a now defunct bookstore in NYC

Bibliophiles mourned when the New York literary landmark Books & Co closed its doors in 1997. Tillman has recovered a part of its legendary appeal through her engaging history of this bookshop, founded by IBM heiress, JeannetteWatson, which became the "stomping ground for literary figures from Woody Allen to Salman Rushdie. Her history is punctuated with anecdotes covering the full spectrum of bookstore life.