What is the significance of bookshops in the collective imagination? What is their role in the history of ideas and letters? In this brilliant and accessible essay, Jorge Carrincreates a possible chronology of the development of books and their artistic representation. How do they become cultural myths, centers of intellectual conversation, or fortresses of political resistance? The Strand in New York, Shakespeare and Company in Parisand la Librairie des ColonnesinTangier, Bertrand andLerDevagar in Lisbon, Stanfords in London, El Virrey in Lima, Lello in Porto, La Central and Laie in Barcelona, la Librera in Avila andEternaCadenciain Buenos Aires, Antonio Machado in Madrid, City Lights and Green Apple Books in San Francisco, the bookshopsof theFondo de CulturaEconmicain Mexico Cityand Bogota