Brattlecast: A Firsthand Look at Secondhand Books

By Brattle Book ShopSociety & Culture Arts History Hobbies

Brattlecast: A Firsthand Look at Secondhand Books episodes

December 01, 2020 Brattlecast #91 - Reach Out and Read
In this episode Ken talks about the Brattle’s early involvement with Reach Out and Read, a nationwide nonprofit dedicated to encouraging families to read together by incorporating books into pediatric care. It all started at Boston City Hospital in the 1980’s with a few volunteers and some donated children’s books. It’s been a joy to support their vital mission. Visit reachoutandread.org to learn more and to help out.
Speaking of young people, the Brattlecast warmly welcomes a brand-new friend of the pod—Ken’s grandson! Congratulations to everyone involved in the creation of this baby genius.
14 min
November 17, 2020 Brattlecast #90 - Go West!
Ken takes a journey from West Street out to Western Massachusetts and finds a bonanza of early material on the Westward expansion. Not long after the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition, there were magazines selling the idea of missionary work, opportunity, and adventure in the Pacific Northwest, brochures encouraging people to settle and farm in the Midwest, and travel posters created by railroad companies to promote the newly created National Parks. These engaging pieces of ephemera can give us a new perspective on how it might have felt to live through this often romanticized era of American history.
16 min
November 10, 2020 Brattlecast #89 - Virtual Book Fairs
The Boston Antiquarian Book Fair is going online! Visit www.abaa.org/vbf this Thursday the 12th through Saturday the 14th to browse items from over 150 booksellers (including the Brattle), or to attend one of the six free virtual seminars. We’ll be replenishing our stock throughout the fair so be sure to check back often. Of course we miss seeing our colleagues and customers in person, but we’ll be together again at the Hynes Convention Center someday, and until then we’re happy to answer any questions, book fair or otherwise, at [email protected].
15 min
November 03, 2020 Brattlecast #88 - Electoral Collectibles
As the 2020 presidential election looms on the horizon, we’re taking a look at some collectible ephemera from past elections, like campaign literature written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and an unused ballot from the 1994 South African election in which Nelson Mandela was elected president. We’ll also explore some of the most negative campaigns in American history, including one so vicious that it may have been responsible for the death of Andrew Jackson’s wife. Finally, we’ll speculate on which uniquely cursed items from this year, such as the “Settle for Biden” face mask, may be of interest to future collectors and historians.
15 min
October 27, 2020 Brattlecast #87 - The Descent of Man
In 1859 Charles Darwin published one of the most influential, and controversial, books ever written: The Origin of the Species. Twelve years later, his follow up, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, in which he applied his theory of evolution to human reproduction, would prove to be equally shocking and transformative. We’ll take a look at a first edition copy of The Descent of Man, explore some of the questionable ideas it would launch, and trace the evolution of these naturalist classics as they were published in hundreds of different editions from the 1800s to the present day.
15 min
October 13, 2020 Brattlecast #86 - The Boy Soldier
The ROTC was phased out of many high schools and colleges during the Vietnam War, but is making a comeback today, for better or worse. We’ll take a look at the history of this controversial organization by way of a book that predates it: The Boy Soldier, a textbook of infantry tactics for school children, first published in 1863 and available now at the Brattle Book Shop. Plus, we’ll take a look behind the scenes, at this process of determining a price for an extremely rare book like this one, which can be harder to research than other sought after but relatively more common works.
14 min
September 29, 2020 Brattlecast #85 - Brattle on the MTA
Boston’s MBTA—iconic, idiosyncratic, and frequently vexing—features the oldest subway system in the United States, and probably the only one to have inspired a hit folk song about its fare hikes. Today we’ll take a look at MBTA ephemera, a big box of which has just arrived in the shop, and at train-related collecting in general. Collectors seek out antique subway signs, lovely frameable maps, evocative timetables of the vanished bus lines of their youth, and much more. Plus we’ll ask, in a time of looming climate change and increased social unrest around fare evasion, should public transportation be free?
18 min
September 15, 2020 Brattlecast #84 - Facsimiles
Today we’re talking facsimiles: Why the real, original Declaration of Independence doesn’t look like it was printed on crinkly, pirate treasure map-style brown paper! The early work that Edgar Allan Poe hated so much that he tried to destroy, but only succeeded in making the surviving copies all the more monetarily (but not poetically) valuable! The publishing house creating such beautiful facsimile editions of modern literature that people started using them to do dust jacket fraud! The advances in printing technology that have recently made it possible to forge an entire book! And why, sometimes, the hardest thing about spotting a fake is letting its owner down easy.
19 min
September 01, 2020 Brattlecast #83 - New Arrivals
Today we’ll be discussing some exciting new arrivals at the shop, as well as some possible future arrivals on the horizon. There’s an inscription from Henry Thoreau to his sister in an otherwise unremarkable volume of poetry, a first edition of The Journals of Lewis and Clark, with its rare map intact, and (hopefully, maybe!) a first edition of Catcher in the Rye. Ken also recounts some of the small daily pleasures of his working life: the undiminished thrill of handling historical documents, the fun of training new employees and reuniting with former employees from decades past, and the adventure of making an appointment to look at books in a house featuring odors, hoarding, and darkness.
20 min
August 18, 2020 Brattlecast #82 - 'The Only Constant is Change'
People thinking of going into the used book business often seek out Ken for his advice. One of these requests promoted this episode of reflections on the ways bookselling has changed since the advent of the internet, and the ways it’s always stayed the same. We’ll look back at a largely vanished world of small, brick and mortar bookshops, stocked with finds from rough-and-tumble library book sales and cross country book buying road trips. We’ll close out the episode with some words of advice that are applicable to any field: bring enthusiasm to whatever you do, establish good relationships with your colleagues and customers, and don’t be afraid to ask questions.
20 min

About Brattlecast: A Firsthand Look at Secondhand Books

From the publisher's feed

At one of America's oldest bookshops, there are just as many stories to be told outside the pages as in them. Join Brattle Book Shop proprietor Kenneth Gloss and co-host Jordan Rich as they share…