Posts by author
Paul Collins
48 posts
Paul Collins teaches writing at Portland State University, and his work appears regularly in New Scientist, Slate, and The Believer. His next book, The Murder of the Century, will be published in June by Crown.
The Hottest Book in Charing Cross
I’ve long been convinced—see my Village Voice piece from a few years back—that the eventual maturing of in-store Print on Demand technology could spell the end for chain stores in…
The First Known Dust Jacket
Sunday’s Guardian reports a pretty nifty find at the Bodleian: the first known dust jacket.
Rock-Arrrrs!
From the Times (London) archive blog, this 1967 delight on offshore pirate rock stations:
Secondhand Bookiestore
A neat find on eBay: someone’s in the last day of an auction on a Harry Stephen Keeler book with a letter from ol’ Harry himself tucked in. Keeler notes…
Look Out New Yorkers: Black Hand has an Auto
“Maintaining the American spirit of up-to-dateness, which is said to attain its most perfect flower in New York, the Black Hand has now added the automobile to its working machinery….…
Cobblers and Coverless Books
Doing well: shoe repair shops and, according to the Telegraph of London, used bookstores:
Let Them Eat Clicks
I have a piece in Friday’s Slate about Amazon.com’s seemingly nonexistent corporate philanthropy — and more importantly, whether that should matter. But I hid the real barb in the tail…
Bloody Foreigners
The February Rolling Stone has a fun piece by David Browne on a 2,200 LP album library hidden in the White House:
What’s Good for General Motors Was…
…maybe not so great for you. I’m in this week’s New Scientist with a piece on the Cornell-Liberty Mutual Survival Car, and the tremendous resistance safety reforms faced from Detroit…
Around the World in 100 Years
The best travel writing usually begins with an absurd proposition, so how could I not pick up an attic-sale book subtitled How to See Europe on Fifty Cents a Day?