Few retail sectors have been as thoroughly transformed by the revolution in online commerce as the retail bookstore. The retail storefront dedicated primarily to the sale of printed books (new or used) has become a vanishing breed. Or so we are told. But how did readers in the past buy things to read? What sorts of retail outlets sold reading material? And what did it feel like to shop there? In this episode of the Clements Bookworm, Clements Library Director Paul Erickson draws on printed, manuscript, and visual sources to shed light on the various settings for the retail traffic in print in the 19th-century northern United States. Books and resources discussed in the program are listed at https://conta.cc/3BB480L