Ah, used bookstores. One of my favorites in recent years is called Against the Current, and it's in a little storefront on Grand Avenue next to the Macalester College campus. It's perfect for someone who can get overwhelmed easily, because it's small but packed with interesting books and adjacent to other places you need to go, so you can pop in and see what's new.
Covid had put a dent in my visiting until yesterday, when I found the store open once again when I happened to be nearby.
I came away with photos of two 20th-century cover exemplars and four books for my collection. First the two covers:
I was drawn by the cover lettering and the color, but I now know what the Nonpartisan League was, and that it still exists (sort of), and was the reason North Dakota has a state-owned bank. I'm still wondering what its secret purposes were, though.
I was also attracted to this book by the lettering used for the words "Without Practice":
As far as the content goes, I thought it was a joke or a parody, but then I saw that the author had another book that was also about golf, so I guess not! It may not be readable even if you click to enlarge, but the Post-It note reads: "$150 – $200 to $400 online." And that's no joke: 1940 editions of this book, like this one, start at those prices and go up to over a thousand dollars.
Here are the books I brought home. Tim O'Brien was in the window. I haven't read this one:
I loaned a copy of a different Jackson Lears book about the history of advertising to someone back when I was in graduate school and I never got it back. While this isn't the same book, I feel a bit restored:
A classic by the late local thinker and writer Jay Walljasper:
Finally, as I was checking out, my eye fell on this:
After my recent reading of Rebecca Solnit's Orwell's Roses, it jumped into my hand.
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