The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss
Long before Barnes & Noble–superstore C.E.O. Leonard Riggio and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos reigned as the big bad wolves of the bookselling business, there was Marcella Burns Hahner.
During her 27-year tenure, from 1916 to 1943, as the visionary buyer and manager of the mammoth book section at Marshall Field & Company, the Chicago department store, Hahner was “the most conspicuous single figure in American publishing,” blurbing her favorite titles in national ads and, according to Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf, causing “mighty publishers in Manhattan to tremble when she stamped [her] little foot.”
