Book It

This bookstore bridges Georgetown and George Washington

This past weekend, in a chance encounter after a documentary at The National Archives, we met Phillip Levy, the owner of an independent bookstore in Georgetown, and promised we would visit his store. Today, we made good on that promise.

Spying us, Levy seemed surprised that we had actually stopped by. "People say they'll do a lot of things, but they don't always do them," he said.

I jokingly told Levy that I had immortalized him and his Bridge Street Books store by detailing our initial encounter in this blog (see the Aug. 27 entry). "Immortalized, I don't think so," Levy said. "But we were in about 500 papers once. Guess who wrote the article?" When I unable to answer his query, Levy explained that noted columnist George Will, whose office is about 2 blocks from Bridge Street Books, once included the local book shop in an article he wrote about the closing of Scribner's Book in New York City. "He said we were like all good independent book stores, only more special," Levy said.

For the next hour, while Judy paged through Turn Left At Machu Picchu, I slowly perused the offerings on both floors.  As expected, the selection reflected the left-leaning, liberal attitudes of its owner with strong sections on history, race, music, art, and poetry.

I had pledged to Judy that, when it came to purchasing, I would be judicious and I think I stayed true to that pledge, buying only 4 books for myself, 2 of which were deeply discounted.  For the record, the books were:

• Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History by David Aaaronovitch
• On History by Howard Zinn
• The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of an American Icon by Ronald Collins andDavid Skover
• Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson by William McKeen

Travelers' Tip:
While you can buy virtually any book online (thanks for that, Amazon) and the superstores of Barnes and Noble have extensive displays, I agree with George Will - there is still something very special about the personalized, eclectic offerings in small independent book stores. Visit them whenever you can.  You never know what you will find.