Longtime ABAA member John J. DeMarco of Saratoga Springs, NY passed away on March 26, 2019. He was 70, and was being treated for cancer. His store, Lyrical Ballad — which DeMarco opened after graduating from college in 1971 and ran with his wife Janice — has been a fixture in Saratoga Springs for almost 50 years, and is “hog heaven for a book lover,” according to fellow ABAA member Kevin M... [more]

ABAA-member Frank S. Klein passed away at his home on January 12, 2019. Obituary: Upon graduation from Cuyahoga Falls High School during World War II, Frank was drafted into the Army. Following his discharge he enrolled at Kent State University where he excelled not only scholastically but also athletically as an outstanding tackle on their varsity football team. Frank, with other Kent students, f... [more]

ABAA members and book lovers the world over mourn the loss of William Reese, antiquarian bookseller of New Haven, CT, and founder of the William Reese Company. He was universally acknowledged to be the greatest American antiquarian bookseller of his generation, known for his expertise in Americana, color plate books, natural history, exploration, literature, and the history of the book, and also w... [more]

I met Helen in 1998, while I was still an undergrad living in Washington, DC. I was dating her son and invited to New York to meet the family during a Passover seder, a holiday I had never observed. David warned me that his mother could be opinionated, was intelligent, and very well read. We immediately bonded over our mutual enjoyment of a made-for-TV movie starring Lynda Carter we had both just ... [more]

Longtime ABAA-member William Dailey died suddenly last month. His former wife and business partner Victoria Dailey has written an obituary, and his friends and colleagues John Windle and Stephen Gertz supplied touching memorials for him online, which we reprint with premission below: Obituary: I first met Bill in 1972 when he manned the front desk at Zetilin & Ver Brugge. I was early for an appoin... [more]

We first learned that Jack Hanrahan died from his friends Rusty and Veta Mott, who wrote to us, "It is with sadness that we yet again pass along the news of the death of a wonderful friend and colleague. Jack Hanrahan, of Wells, Maine, died at 7:30 last night, age 85. Jack, a long time member of ABAA, was a man who contributed to the world not only as an antiquarian bookseller, but as a Milton sch... [more]

We mourn the passing of Ed Glaser, who died on July 31, 2017 at 88 years old. He was universally cherished for his humor, wisdom, ethics and generosity, and he was part of the book trade and its culture until his dying days. Ed started out in business in the mid 1960s, quoting books found in thrift shops to want lists in AB-Bookman's Weekly. By 1969 he had quit his full time job and opened up a la... [more]

“Three columns of unknown verse by the Mad Poet of Broadway: Life is good.” (A brief remembrance of Robert Fraker from Garrett Scott, May 3, 2017.) I probably met Robert Fraker of Savoy Books sometime in the mid-1990s, though later neither of us could ever remember when exactly it happened. It must have been some February back when I worked for John Crichton at the Brick Row Book Shop in San F... [more]

Bernard M. Rosenthal was born in 1920 in Munich. Most of his immediate family left Munich for Florence in 1933, left Italy for France in 1938, and arrived in the US in 1939, each move in response to the problem of being Jewish. Both sides of his family, the Rosenthals and on his mother's side, the Olschkis of Italy, were heavily involved in the book trade going back generations as antiquarians, pr... [more]

Editor's note: Jim Harrison (1937-2016) was a poet, novelist, essayist, screen-writer, sporting writer, editor, and translator. Much of his work is set in sparsely populated regions of the West and Midwest. As Charlie Brice wrote in a review in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette of The English Major, “Harrison's... appreciation for life's pleasures, his hallowing of the every day, his celebration of fo... [more]

Cheryl Needle, an antiquarian bookseller from Pepperell, MA, died in January. Born in 1948, she is survived by children and grandchildren, her partner of 25+ years, Frank Infante, her former husband and sometime business partner, Matthew Needle of Newburyport, MA, and her many friends and colleagues in the trade. Although she was not a member of the ABAA, she had all the qualities one looks for in... [more]

Independent rare book expert Rebecca Romney remembers the great Italian linguist and writer Umberto Eco, who died last week. For a young woman who trained as a linguist; who spent more hours in her college years reading in Latin than reading modern novels; who has a particularly delicate spot for Borges, and for Bruno Schultz; and who found her calling in the rare book world, Umberto Eco was like ... [more]