Boswell is pleased to host an evening featuring Jeff Deutsch, Director of Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstore, for a celebration of his new book, In Praise of Good Bookstores, an eloquent and charming reflection on the singular importance of our business.

Registration link coming soon – keep an eye on this page for updates! Please note: Masks are required for all attendees, at all times. Speakers may be unmasked during their presentation. Capacity is limited. No food or drink allowed during events. Be sure to preorder your copy of In Praise of Bookstores right now.

In the age of one-click shopping, this is no ordinary defense of bookstores, but rather an urgent account of why they are essential places of discovery, refuge, and fulfillment that enrich the communities that are lucky enough to have them. The question has been asked, though we have our own opinion: Do we need bookstores in the twenty-first century? If so, what makes a good one? Deutsch pays loving tribute to one of our most important and endangered civic institutions. He considers how qualities like space, time, abundance, and community find expression in a good bookstore. Along the way, he also predicts - perhaps audaciously - a future in which the bookstore not only endures, but realizes its highest aspirations.

In exploring why good bookstores matter, Deutsch draws on his lifelong experience as a bookseller, and also his upbringing as an Orthodox Jew. This spiritual and cultural heritage instilled in him a reverence for reading as an essential part of a meaningful life. Central among Deutsch’s arguments for the necessity of bookstores is the incalculable value of browsing - since, when we are deep in the act of looking at the shelves, we move through space as though we are inside the mind itself, immersed in self-reflection.

Jeff Deutsch is Director of Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstores, which in 2019 he helped incorporate as the first not-for-profit bookstore whose mission is bookselling.