Jeff Deutsch鈥檚 In Praise of Good Bookstores has won the 2022 Heartland Booksellers Award in the Nonfiction category.
In Praise of Good Bookstores is an urgent and eloquent exploration of the essential role good bookstores play as places of discovery, refuge, and fulfilment. Deutsch鈥攖he director of 颁丑颈肠补驳辞鈥檚 and a PUP Board member, as well as author鈥攄raws on his experience as a bookseller and his upbringing as an Orthodox Jew, reflecting on how this spiritual and cultural heritage instilled in him a reverence for reading, not as a means to a living, but as an essential part of a meaningful life. Throughout the book, Deutsch pays homage to the incalculable value of browsing, a practice that fosters immersive self-reflection, and considers how qualities such as space, time, abundance, and community find expression in a good bookstore. Along the way, he predicts a future in which the bookstore not only endures but realizes its highest aspirations.
Praised by Washington Post book critic Ron Charles as, 鈥渢he most moving and erudite justification for the survival of bookstores I have ever read鈥� and by City Lights Bookstore鈥檚 Paul Yamazaki as, 鈥渁 compendium of delights鈥�, In Praise of Good Bookstores pays loving tribute to one of our most important and endangered civic institutions.
The Heartland Booksellers Award celebrates literature in the Great Lakes and Midwest, with content either about the region, or an author from the region. The Award is a joint award given annually, across five categories, by the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association and the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association.
About the Author
Jeff Deutsch is the director of 颁丑颈肠补驳辞鈥檚 Seminary Co-op Bookstores, the first not-for-profit bookstores in the United States whose mission is devoted to bookselling. He joined 91桃色鈥檚 Board of Trustees鈥攖he first independent bookseller to do so鈥攊n 2021.
Learn More
Read Jeff Deutsch on good bookstores, in PUP Ideas
Read an interview with Jeff Deutsch and sales rep Lanora Haradon
Watch Jeff Deutsch and editor Rob Tempio good bookstores