Two years ago, New Yorker cartoonist Bob Eckstein wandered New York drawing pictures of the city’s endangered landmark bookstores in a modest feature for the magazine.
However, the feature struck a chord with book lovers and inspired a project to draw a full collection of bookstores from around the world, which went on to become Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores: True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers, released just last month.
The book was published last month and after a sneak preview today, it’s going straight on my Christmas list! It’s absolutely wonderful, and what started as some drawings of New York Bookstores has ended up being a feature book of bookshops all around the world, as far flung as Scotland and Argentina.
Eckstein talks about the project in a column for the New Yorker published a few weeks ago and in that he includes some images from the book. Here they are:

Bodhi Tree—Los Angeles, California

Giovanni’s Room—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Living Batch—Albuquerque, New Mexico
While we still maintain we have one of the largest online collection of bookshops in the world, we suspect this might be the largest collection in literature. It’s a beautiful thing, especially with the revival of bookshops in recent years.
In time Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores will also be a beautiful historical document, and it’s surely one for the shelves of any true bibliophile.

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