Will we see the end of book publishing in America?

The question would have been unthinkable not very long ago. Today, it’s worth asking because there’s the possibility that electronic books will outgrow and replace printed books. The first electronic book reader was introduced in 2006. Five years later e-books began to outsell printed books.

While digital publishing seems to be growing, the printed book industry is continuing its long decline. Countless independent bookstores have vanished from the American landscape, followed by the demise of the Border’s bookstore chain in 2011. Now, most Americans live within driving distance of only one bookstore—Barnes & Noble—and that company’s health is not exactly robust. (The company plans to close 20 of its stores every year for the next decade.)

However, the fear that book publishing will disappear has been around for more than a century. Back in 1958, for example, this fear prompted American Publisher Bennett Cerf to write “Books Are Here To Stay.” He was writing in response to the concern of parents, educators, and publishers that young Americans were becoming addicted to television. Kids, they said, showed no interest in reading but remained glued to the tube all day. Soon the great publishing houses would shut down, they assumed, and books would start to disappear from the American home.

But Cerf saw things differently, and he knew what he was talking about. He had run Random House publishing for 30 years, and could assure Post readers that “publishers cry more easily than anybody else on earth. … To hear them tell it, there’s always something threatening to bankrupt half the publishers extant. Television is merely their latest bugaboo.”

And then, interestingly, Cerf told us several things that were going to destroy publishing before television.

In the 1900s, he said, a New York publisher prophesied that interurban trolley cars would bring about the end of reading in America. The new trolley lines being built in those days allowed Americans to easily commute between the country and the city. They also permitted the youth to go joyriding for a day, taking a trolley from Chicago to Milwaukee, for example, or Philadelphia to Atlantic City, New Jersey. What youngsters, the publisher asked, would be content with books if they could ride for hours in a trolley car?

Even before the interurban lines were bearing youths away from their books, Cerf said, the bicycle was going to kill the book. Young men and women of the 1890s spent all their free time on bicycles, even taking 100-mile, weekend-long rides, leaving them no time or energy to read.

In the first few decades of the 20th century, books faced growing competition from the phonograph, the radio, and the affordable Model T that seemed to consume more and more of the average American’s time.

Yet with all these alternatives to reading, the popularity of books continued to grow. The Book Of The Month Club, founded 83 years ago this month, proved immensely popular. Between 1926 and 1929, membership grew from 2,000 to 100,000.

Today we are far from seeing the end of publishing. More than a million new titles are produced every year, including over 200,000 self-published books. This latter number is misleading, though, since many of these ‘books’ are purely digital and will never see a single sheet of paper.

As we’ve stated before in the Post Perspective, the love of reading and the love of books are not the same thing. The lovers of reading don’t care if they read text out of a book, off a smartphone, or from the back of a cereal box. As long as it’s legible, they’ll enjoy it.

Book lovers, on the other hand, are enchanted by the feel of a cloth binding, the scent of the pages, and crisp, dark type on white paper. They’ll spend fortunes on books, and care for them tenderly, and might even read some of them.

For lovers of reading, the future has never been better. More people are reading and writing than ever before, and the Web offers an endless supply of new, unexpected material. But for book lovers, the future does not look promising. The number of bookstores, and the size of their inventory, are not likely to grow. However, book lovers should take comfort in the fact that no form of entertainment has ever disappeared. The Internet hasn’t replaced television, which didn’t replace radio, which didn’t replace movies, which didn’t replace the theater, etc. Americans are continually rediscovering and reviving old entertainments and crafts.

We will see fewer large-inventory bookstores in the future, but a growth of print-on-demand (POD) publishers. These small, independent operations will print and bind any book of your choice. You can get the title you want in minutes, and the POD operation doesn’t have to pay the costs of maintaining an inventory of unsold titles.

The good news is that book publishing won’t disappear. The better news is that Americans today are reading more than ever.

Are Books Really Here to Stay? The Saturday Evening Post

But it was another 26-year-old, Roger Tory Peterson, who produced the book that would change birding and, some say, kick-start the environmental movement. In 1934, Peterson’s A Field Guide to the Birds proved the perfect tool for both novice birders and their experienced brethren; it was inexpensive ($2.75), portable (just 7.5-by-5 inches), and useful, introducing what came to be known as the Peterson Identification System, which deploys arrows to point out the distinguishing field marks discussed in the text. Peterson’s book (now $26) is a must for any birder, and here are a few more:

The Sibley Guide to Birds
544 pages, $39.95

Pros: Sibley is extremely thorough and reliable, featuring illustrations of birds in flight as well as standing, perched, or afloat; 6,600 illustrations in all.

Cons: At roughly 6-by-10 inches, it’s not very portable—though it also comes in two smaller regional (east/west) versions.

Kaufman Field Guide to Birds Of North America
392 pages, $18.95

Pros: Digitally enhanced photography (though some birders don’t like this aspect) is helpful for beginners.

Cons: Some readers complain about blurry or pale images.

National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America,
Sixth Edition
576 pages, $27.95

Pros: It’s comprehensive and up-to-date, featuring all 990 species found in North America. It also has terrific maps, with major fall and spring migration routes.

Cons: Too large and heavy for practical field use; like Sibley, it comes in smaller eastern and western editions.

Bird Nerd Library Essentials The Saturday Evening Post

I was not disappointed.

Each woman spent a year in Paris in a significant decade of the Baby Boomer generation: the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. Each decade presented uniquely different environments to the three distinctly different women.  Clearly, their time in Paris influenced them greatly, and the experiences and lessons learned were carried throughout the rest of their lives.

Kaplan researched not only the women for each section of the book, but the events of the time when they grew to young womanhood, why they decided to go to Paris, and how their individual experiences were directly connected to their ultimate place in history.

Each woman’s chapter has two parts, beginning with her background prior to Paris, her decision to venture to Paris, and the details of her stay there. The second half illustrates the life of each woman after her return and what became of her, personally and professionally.

Unless you’ve lived under a rock since birth, you know Jacqueline was, and still is, one of America’s favorite and most significant First Ladies. She brought her intense love of history, beauty, and art to bear during her time in the White House, finding and restoring the historic and significant artifacts of the Executive Mansion while acting as an internationally-recognized hostess to the world leaders who graced her table.  Jackie was always French, in her ancestry and in her style of living.

Susan Sontag was the lesser known to me of the three women, and what a year she had in Paris! She left her husband and infant son to travel to Paris on her husband’s dime, explored the community of writers as well as her own sexual orientation at a time in her life when she was struggling to truly know herself and find the freedom to be who she wanted to be. The New Novel was changing the way authors wrote, without plot or character, and she made this style her own. Susan came to be known, first and foremost, as a significant American author and one of the leading intellectuals of her generation.

Angela Davis was a recognized philosopher and teacher when she traveled to Paris. Two significant events occurred during her time there: she learned from a newspaper article that four girls had died in a church bombing in Birmingham, her hometown, and she decided to join the Communist Party. Returning to the United States to continue her studies, she became a professor and an advocate for the American prison system. She spent 18 months in jail for her consequential connection to a courtroom shooting, also related to her involvement with the rights of prisoners.  She still teaches today and has written several books.

Dreaming in French is the first multiple biography I’ve had the pleasure to read and it is unique in that regard, bringing together three very different women with one similarity, which helped to shape their influence on those of us fortunate to live in their time.

Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis The Saturday Evening Post

Summer Reading The Saturday Evening Post

Well-regarded assistant district attorney Andy Barber, his wife Laurie, and their 14-year-old son Jacob, are living a relatively normal life in Newton, MA. When Jacob’s classmate, Ben Rifkin, is found stabbed to death in the woods, Andy gets the case and is determined to bring the killer to justice. The tables are turned however, when evidence points to Jacob as the killer and he is arrested and charged with murder.

Barber takes a forced leave of absence from his job and helps their experienced defense attorney defend their son, who neither Andy nor Laurie can believe is guilty of murder. They are prepared to go to the wall to defend and protect their only son but, in the meantime, their lives begin to unravel as they deal with it. They become pariahs in the community and prisoners in their own home. Andy and Laurie begin to question themselves and their responsibilities as parents, and questions arise relative to the criminal nature of Andy’s father and grandfather. Is there a genetic thread here that has fallen upon their son?

Landay, a former district attorney, keeps readers guessing about Jacob’s culpability and the ultimate outcome as Laurie buckles from the public accusations, her own doubts about both her son and her husband, and the pressure of the trial. All of the ingredients of a legal thriller are here, but the focus here is the unraveling of a family that has found itself embroiled in a nightmare.

Defending Jacob is available from Delacorte Press.

Book Review: Defending Jacob The Saturday Evening Post

“I heard they were cutting back on the length of stays.”

From Jul/Aug 2000

Boy, hospitals aren’t messing around these days. Don’t let the door hit your stitches on the way out. This is from cartoonist and author Joe Farris. His new book, A Soldier’s Sketchbook, is about his experiences as a young soldier in World War II. We’ll show a sneak preview below.

“What a coincidence! I defended myself in court, too!”

From Nov/Dec 2001

Okay, any second now, this guy will remember the old saying “a man who defends himself in court has a fool for a lawyer.” Joe is an artist and a sculptor who has had many one-man shows and has also appeared in group exhibits.

“August! My gosh, I really overslept!”

From Jul/Aug 1997

Gee, is it August already? This appeared in the Post in 1997. Joe is a staff cartoonist and cover artist for The New Yorker. His work appears in many other venues such as Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times.

A Soldier’s Sketchbook

A Soldier’s Sketchbook
Courtesy National Geographic

I’m always pleased to show off another great cartoonist and his work for the Post, but I also get to let you know about Joseph Farris’ new book from National Geographic: A Soldier’s Sketchbook. His close-knit family kept 18-year-old Joe’s letters home, which the author intersperses with his sketches and paintings.

Aboard the U.S.S. General W. H. Gordon, 1944.
From A Soldier's Sketchbook
Courtesy National Geographic

Joe describes this sketch: “On board the U.S.S. General W.H. Gordon on the way to Marseilles, France, October, 1944.”

"This watercolor shows one of the most dangerous moments in our battle for the Maginot Line. The Germans had bracketed our position, and we anxiously feared the next shell would zero in on us." p. 120
from A Soldier’s Sketchbook
Courtesy National Geographic

It’s difficult for me to imagine that the “hardened soldier” participating and sketching these events was still a teenager. The caption says, “The dash to Ft. Freudenberg – Maginot Line. Bitche, France – December 1944.”

We thank the team at the Book Division of the National Geographic Society for the sketches and cover for A Soldier’s Sketchbook, which will be released in November. It’s a always a treat to show off our talented cartoonists—but it’s also an honor to remember a World War II veteran.

Meet the Cartoonist (and Author): Joe Farris The Saturday Evening Post

Back when it was crowded with booksellers, Book Row would have attracted anyone who loved reading. But it was irresistible to bibliophiles and bibliomanics. A bibliophile is anyone who loves the look, feel, and scent of books as much as their contents. Bibliomanics, however, are obsessed by books. They are fanatic hunters and compulsive buyers, usually purchasing more books than they can read in their lifetime.

In his 1944 article, “Book Row,” Don Samson gives a brief history of a bibliomaniac who haunted the area.

A shoe clerk from Brooklyn wandered into one of the secondhand bookshops on Book Row. He had never bought a book in his life, but picking up a musty volume, he liked the feel of it and bought it. The more he handled it, the more he liked it. He began buying books, and after a year his modest apartment was filled with them. Finally, his wife couldn’t take a bath because the tub was full of books. “You love your books more than you do me,” she wept, and threatened to go home to mother unless he got rid of them. He did. But within two weeks he was buying books again. His wife? She went home to mother.

There is something about books that provokes fascination and the odd compulsions that Samson saw in Book Row’s regulars:

A regular cash customer is the lady of the evening who collects the works of Marcel Proust. There is the Bowery bum who panhandles to buy books containing the word” hell,” books which he burns” to destroy the devil.” And there is the lawyer, internationally known, who collects books with uncut pages. “Virgin books,” he calls them.

Some people buy anything. Others, like the editor who has seventy-five copies of South Wind, will buy only copies of a single title. A collector who has all the dealers mystified is a banker who buys books in one series, Burt’s Home Library of popular classics. He tears the covers off and has the books and the covers restitched, switching titles and covers so that no book has the right title. Thus Alice in Wonderland becomes Black Beauty; The Divine Comedy, The Last Days of Pompeii, and so on. He boasts to the dealers, “You should see my library. It’s wonderful!”

The hangout for lovers of the unusual is a shop that specializes in strange books. Many are first attracted to the shop by the huge, black, plaster-of-Paris cat that crouches menacingly in the window; others are led here by their “vibrations.” An old German woman used to come regularly to buy books on the occult. One day she bought a book entitled “How to Make Yourself Invisible.”

“And she never came back,” says the dealer. “At least, we never saw her again.”

Book smellers are common. But they are hard to detect because, while running the nose along the bindings, they appear to be short-sightedly browsing. One smeller, a college professor, collects old, odoriferous volumes and wears the badge of his fraternity—a redrubbed nose. A well-known actress, a confessed smeller who never buys a book, is allowed the run of the shops because of the trade she attracts.

There are also book dusters. A good one can dust as many as fifty books in a single visit. He picks up a book, looks at the price marked in it, snaps it shut and, with a mighty huff and puff, blows the dust off before easing it back into place. Ironically, more men than women are dusters.

Odd behavior, I’ll grant you. An electronic book would never excite such mania, or even a semblance of this fascination. E-books will never hold the sensual appeal of what, for many Americans, is the “real thing”: a clean, hard-bound, octavo with clear, dark type on bright, clean pages. And books have several practical benefits. In a recent New York Times article, Sam Grobart wrote about the technical gadgets we won’t need in the future: desktop computers, digital cameras, and iPods. But he advised readers to keep their books. Compared to e-books, the real thing has “a terrific, high-resolution display,” durability, greater water-resistance, and “tremendous battery life.”

The Bibliomaniacs of Book Row The Saturday Evening Post

BUT, if you love books themselves, you may have chosen the wrong century to live in. The real-world, physical, walk-through-and-browse bookstore is disappearing from the American landscape. Independent bookshops have been quickly fading away, and now Borders Books, the national chain with 642 stores, has filed for Chapter 11 status. It will close about 200 stores this year and un-employ 6000 workers. If it can’t clear its debts, publishers will have to absorb millions in losses, which may require them to cut back on the number of books they print this year.

The fate of Borders will make little difference to the people who are happy reading their novels on a Kindle, Nook, or iPad. But it will mean a great deal to devoted bibliophiles, who would prefer an afternoon in a good bookstore to a day at a theme park. For them, the online bookstore can never replace the pleasures of strolling down aisles of books, scanning new titles or picking up new releases that unexpectedly tickle their curiosity.

The peculiar lure of bookstores dates back to the 18^th century, when printers began turning out books in quantities large enough for create a reading public. Bookstalls appeared in cities like Paris and London and drew a steady stream of old scholars, young students, doctors, ministers, and merchants who searched for hardbound treasures.

One of America’s earliest booksellers, Leary’s Book Store in Philadelphia, was a happy hunting ground for book lovers between 1850 and 1969. As Pete Martin described it in a 1949 Post article, “House of a Million Books,” Leary’s was the antithesis of the modern chain bookstore. It was old, dark, dusty, cluttered, and staffed by silent, reserved salespeople.

"Books that stay on the shelves too long are moved to stalls out on the sidewalk, where they are offered at twenty-five cents each or five books for a dollar. If they don't sell there, they are presently junked."

In Leary’s nobody asks you anything, unless you yourself ask a question first.  Hung on the walls are placards that read:

To make you feel perfectly at ease in examining our immense stock, the employees are instructed not to offer assistance without being asked. This, we hope, will not be considered as inattention on our part. If you desire information, ask all the questions you want, without feeling under any obligation to purchase.

In theory, this means that if you felt like it you could visit Leary’s every day of your life and read your way at least partly through the 106 departments into which the store divides its more than 900,000 books. Throughout all those years spent reading, no one would ask you to buy a single book.

To booklovers, it comes close to being an American institution… Leary’s has been run for 113 years on the principle of not selling the customer. Businessmen may prove with charts and graphs that you can’t do business that way. But it’s been done that way at Leary’s ever since the elder Oliver Wendell Holmes was a youth just a few years out of Harvard.

This notion is so thoroughly inculcated on Leary’s salesmen that a few years ago one of them carried it to its ultimate conclusion. He stopped speaking to his customers altogether, even when they spoke to him, and had to be retired to pasture.

If there is such a thing as poetic justice, he is being allowed to browse there without interruption.

Leary’s “laissez faire” sales policy proved to be  just what serious bibliophiles wanted. Generations of book lovers became deeply attached to the old store on Philadelphia’s South 9^th Street.

[Novelist Christopher] Morley pays Leary’s this tribute: “It would be as impossible for any bibliophile to pass this secondhand bookstore as for a woman to go by a wedding party without trying to see the bride.”  Morley also remarked that he would rather see one of the nation’s historic shrines demolished by fire than to be told one morning as he donned his bathrobe that Leary’s was no more.

Stories are current in Philadelphia about exciting book finds made at Leary’s. The most persistent of these has to do with the Leary’s customer who was supposed to have found a first edition of Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, for ten cents and afterward sold it for $5000. Leary’s has no way of knowing whether this story is even partly true. It does know that the peak price brought by a Maggie was about $2000. But even if true, no one at Leary’s would feel regret at having been so outsmarted.

Mrs. William S. Stuart, president of the Leary Stuart Corporation, remembers a valuable early edition of Robert Louis Stevenson that was picked up by a customer on the fifty-cent table. She also recalls that a book written by one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and presented by him to George Washington—the book bore both Washington’s autograph and that of the signer—was found in Leary’s in a basket of books previously thought to be junk.

This illustration by Carl Spitzweg was on every sign for Leary's Bookstore.

When Leary’s closed in 1968, several valuable items were discovered in the process of emptying the store. One of them was a first printing of the Declaration of Independence, which was sold for $400,000.

Learys is still fondly remembered by former customers, as you can see at books-rare.blogspot.com/2006/07/this-is-picture-learys-old-book-store.html.

Will anyone remember Amazon.com so warmly 40 years after it closes?

Next: The Curious Habits of the Bibliophile In Its Native Habitat

Late, Great American Bookstores: Leary’s Books The Saturday Evening Post

“On the flight home, I kept thinking about that train,” says McCommons, who teaches journalism at Northern Michigan University. “When are we going to have a decent passenger-rail system in this country again, one that moves people efficiently between major cities and provides Americans with a true alternative to airplanes and automobiles?” To answer that question, McCommons spent a year riding on and writing about America’s trains. He shares insights from his journey in the May/June cover story of The Saturday Evening Post, and also in his book, Waiting on a Train available for purchase from publisher Chelsea Green.

Exclusive Excerpt from James McCommons’ New Book The Saturday Evening Post

Fig and Lavender Honey Yogurt Pie

Fig and Lavender Honey Yogurt Pie

Recipe from Gourmet Meals in Crappy Little Kitchens by Jennifer Schaertl
(HCI Books; April 2010; Trade paperback/$18.95)

Serves 10 to 12

• 1 1/3 cups graham cracker crumbs
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 cup quick cooking oats
• 3 tablespoons light brown sugar
• 1 pinch sea salt
• 1 tablespoon unflavored gelatin
• 3 tablespoons cold water
• 1 cup Greek-style yogurt
• 1/2 cup lavender honey
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream, chilled
• 12 purple mission figs, quartered lengthwise

Gourmet Meals in Crappy Little Kitchens by Jennifer Schaertl. Available now from HCI Books.

Stir together graham cracker crumbs, melted butter, oats, brown sugar, and salt until moistened. Press into bottom of 6-inch spring form pan and half way up sides (or press crumb mixture into 9-inch pie pan), packing tightly with your fingertips so it is even and compacted.

Sprinkle gelatin over cold water in small sauté pan and let soften for 2 minutes. Whisk together yogurt and honey in medium-size bowl. Set small sauté pan over the lowest flame possible while stirring constantly, just until it melts. Whisk melted gelatin into yogurt mixture until smooth.

Whip heavy cream until it holds stiff peaks. Gently fold half of whipped cream into yogurt mixture, taking care not to deflate cream. Now fold last of whipped cream into yogurt mixture. Gently spoon mixture into prepared spring form pan, then cover pan with plastic wrap and refrigerate until completely set, at least 6 hours and up to one day.

Hold small knife under hot tap water, and then run it along sides of pie to help release it from pan. Open the spring and slice pie into wedges. Serve each slice on dessert plate. Place 2 pieces of fig on top of each slice, and scatter a few fig pieces on plate. Serve ice cold.

Swap It:
You can substitute low-fat “Greek-style” yogurt in this recipe with fantastic results. It has a thicker, creamier consistency than regular yogurt because it has been strained to remove the excess liquid.

Crappy Little Kitchen? The Saturday Evening Post

The cartoons may be a little corny or considered politically incorrect today (the dangers of women drivers, the problems of cigarette rationing), but they were a treat for soldiers overseas during World War II. Tiny as they were, the booklets contained three selections from the full-sized Saturday Evening Post, a mixture of articles and short stories, which could fit into a uniform shirt pocket. According to the Post editors, these pieces were not condensed articles, or “literary C rations.” By leaving out advertising, the Post was able to get a lot in a tiny package.

Although servicemen referred to them as “dehydrated Posts,” they were immensely grateful for them. “It is seldom that we G.I.’s over here in Burma have the time to write all the letters that we often plan to. However, I must take this moment to tell you how much pleasure is derived from reading these Post Yarns which you are sending overseas to us,” one wrote. “This little booklet is just the answer for a quick snack of reading out in the field after chow or during a few minutes of rest anywhere.” Another wrote, “Recently, a rather battered copy of Post Yarns came into my possession. After reading the three stories it contained, I became quite curious about this excellent publication. I traced back through the fellow who gave it to me as well as I could. I found that eight of my shipmates had read it before me. None of them knew how it got aboard or where it came from.”

The complete set.

“It was a good idea,” the Post editors wrote in 1946, “and we’re proud of our share in it, but there are single letters in our files which would dampen any tendency toward preening. We had a good many letters from uncomplaining men who found the little books especially useful because these readers cannot handle a book requiring two hands.”

Some letters gave pause for other reasons. A paratrooper wrote that he read them “to help relieve the tension” just before making a jump. Another soldier guarding a building noted that they were “easy to carry, easy to read, and easy to hide from the officer of the watch.”

The Saturday Evening Post was happy to report in the June 22, 1946 issue that Post Yarns had gone to press for the last time. “Thousands of its readers,” they cheerfully noted, “no longer are wearing the shirts that the edition was designed for. And they aren’t doing their reading under the special and outlandish conditions which made Post Yarns popular.”

To see more images of our Post Yarn set, click here.

In the GI’s Shirt Pocket The Saturday Evening Post

Fortunately, Baxter, being the noble caregiver he was, went the extra mile, starring in his very own YouTube video to ensure his paw print on society would forever be remembered.

I’m not sure why I was so stunned by this video, but I was, as were about 400,000 others who saw it, encountering something rarely seen.

Baxter’s job was to comfort those who lay dying and in pain while giving intimate aid to those on their transition from life to death, sometimes in their very last hours.

For the patients on the hospice ward, Baxter, a golden retriever/chow mix, became a mobile furry emergency unit, entering in and out of damaged lives with near-flamboyant grace and mercy to provide whatever healing he could.

Lest anyone think therapy dogs are merely the newest addition to American’s love affair with their companion animals, let us consider who among us could consistently do this wrenching work? I, for one, despite a desiring heart, could not.

This, though, is where Baxter’s immense soul triumphed, says his owner, Melissa Joseph, who each week wheeled Baxter into the hospice unit in his red covered wagon filled with stuffed pillows—his favorite being an oversized bone-shaped number with the title: Old Soul.

Joseph, who rescued Baxter when he was 2 from an abusive environment, says one of his most therapeutic tools were his big “puppy” eyes that looked as if they were ringed with blurry-black eyeliner. He’d look into patient’s eyes with these huge soulful orbs, and pain and time would relax their grip, says Joseph.

“He’d go eye to eye—it was one of his favorite things to do—and I dare anyone not to melt. He had such a very beautiful and intense gaze,” she recalls. His huge bear paws and real-life teddy bear ears [“I’d always tell people his ears were big because as an angel they helped him fly”] made him both irresistible and potent medicine.

As a key member of the hospice’s Pawsitive Pals Pet Therapy Program team for seven years, Baxter licked the faces and feet of dying children, men, women and the elderly. He wore silly ad hoc cone hats to celebrate the lonely on their birthdays and allowed thin arms to envelope him for hours.

You can read about 36 patients who received the Baxter treatment in Joseph’s book, “Moments with Baxter.”  All proceeds from the sale of the book as well as the sale of a sweet stuffed Baxter animal will go to various animal rescue charities. For more information, log onto: www.momentswithbaxter.com.

One of the things that allow dying patients to open up so quickly and readily to a skilled therapy animal like Baxter, “is likely because they don’t have to talk or worry about interacting; they just get to be there with the comfort,” says Joseph, who was a critical part of team Baxter.

She and Baxter worked on all holidays, which can be especially emotionally draining and tough.  “Maybe they were struggling thinking about saying good-bye to their loved ones, and all the things in their life, but Baxter didn’t require anything of anyone. He just gave unconditional presence and love and softness,” explains Joseph. “He just instinctively and amazingly always knew exactly what to do and who needed what.”

One patient Joseph remembers well, a 36 year-old woman she and Baxter had visited for about a year. The last time they ever saw her she was being transported by ambulance to go home and die. Joseph says she overheard one of the ambulance drivers asking where room 207 was and knew he was asking about this young woman. She asked if she could place Baxter on the gurney to surprise this patient and bring her some joy.

“He struggled with saying yes and really never did,” says Joseph. “I just put Baxter on top (of it) and all of a sudden away we went.”  The hospice staff present that day remember seeing Baxter and this dying woman together on the gurney, rolling around the beautiful hospice grounds.  She died soon after.

The medical staff who worked with Baxter clearly loved and admired him. “If I had just one word to describe Baxter it’d be ‘sage,’ says Dr. Shannon Moore, an oncologist at the institute. “It’s not a word you use about many beings, but it was true about Baxter.”

Lisa McCollough, the Hospice’s chaplain thought Baxter “a rare dignified soul. He just had this immense dignity and spiritual-like presence.” She adds, “And he was very free with his licks.”

Rodney Swan, the hospice’s pharmaceutical aroma-therapist noticed how Baxter seemed to sense the value of a good photo op and “when there were cameras around, he’d give a quick turn and almost smile at the cameras, and then immediately he’d go back to why he was really there. He never let it interfere with his important work.”

One veteran hospice night nurse simply labeled Baxter “the guru of therapy dogs.”

More than a hundred people -standing room only including doctors, nurses, patients, family members, and fans – said a formal goodbye to this amazing animal on October 21 at a memorial put on by the hospice.

I’d never before been to a memorial service for a dog, and I can tell you there was, as they say, few dry eyes in the house.

As was mentioned at the service, Baxter was able to do his most honorable work because Joseph and her husband Dennis Bussey took rare care of their dog: Towards the end of his life Baxter received twice daily acupuncture treatments, massages and swam therapeutically two to three times a week.

Joseph says it helped with Baxter’s sometimes gnawing arthritic pain. “But I really do believe his suffering often overshadowed their [patient’s] own, if for just that brief moment in time. And helped them focus their compassion on Baxter as he was focusing his on them.”

Ultimately, Baxter’s story speaks to me some important lessons about what the face of death and the end-of-life journey can be, and the knowledge that there is comfort for it from some very unlikely places – like the sweet licking tongue of a gifted healing therapy dog.

This story is published with permission from the author and the L.A. Times, where the article first appeared. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed

Think Pawsitive! The Saturday Evening Post

More than any other Founding Father, he would have savored life in 21st-century America. He would have enjoyed hosting his own Web site and Facebook account.

He’d post videos of his scientific experiments on YouTube and would ‘tweet’ new aphorisms onto his “Poor Richard Twitter” account. (“A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle. LOL!”)

But would he find that the wireless world and all its fascinating possibilities consumed too much of his day. Currently, adult Americans—who generally assert they have no free time—spend almost one hour a day online (and one source claims that teens spend 72 hours a week using electronic media, or about 10 hours a day!)

Traditionally, Americans have not chosen between activities. Instead we have made extra time in the day by working harder, moving faster, and generally speeding up the rhythm of life.

The Huffington Post (no relation to The Saturday Evening Post) recently started a book club and chose In Praise of Slowness by Carl Honoré for its first title. The book encourages readers to choose the pace of our lives and balance the speed in so many of their activities with slower, more thoughtful tempos.

In his day, Ben Franklin constantly encouraged his readers to use time wisely:

“Lost time is never found again.”
“Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.”
“Do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”

This last line reflects Franklin’s belief in productivity over activity. We think he would have approved of the idea of slowing life to a deliberate pace, so we don’t squander time with idleness or mindless haste.

As he urged his readers:

“Never confuse motion with action … Leisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent person will obtain, the lazy one never.”

Ben Franklin and the Slow Movement The Saturday Evening Post

The Shaman Drum wasn’t just a store, but, to one Ann Arbor bibliophile, part of the community’s “intellectual life.” For readers of all ages, the bookstore is a cultural touchstone. Its gradual disappearance seems cause for alarm and even panic. What is a country without its books?

Yet reading, paradoxically, is more popular than ever. Books are sold everywhere, including on the Internet. Hit books — such as J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series — sell millions more copies than bestsellers did just a decade ago. We are still a reading nation. What’s changing is the very definition of what a book is.

“I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve gone from a lifelong hoarder of books to a profligate book-dumper,” says my friend Bob, a voracious reader. He’s figuring out what to put on his bookshelves, and whether to even call them that anymore, thanks to the rise of the electronic book reader. In the short time they’ve been widely available, about a million readers have purchased one and downloaded millions more books to read. It’s no stretch to say e-book readers are already the equivalent of a New York Times bestseller.

It was 1997 when MIT professor Joseph Jacobson founded E Ink Corporation. E Ink displays are nearly as flat as an ordinary piece of paper and draw very little power. It’s these traits that make E Ink displays nearly perfect as a reading medium.E Ink instantly captured the attention of futurists, but it would take several more years and technological breakthroughs to turn E Ink into something that would feel and act like a computerized book.

That’s why Amazon’s Kindle family, at the forefront of e-book innovation, is barely two years old. Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos, a Princeton educated hedge fund manager turned entrepreneur, has made a business out of disrupting established industries, even his own.

Bezos made Amazon the world’s largest bookstore, even while Borders, Barnes & Noble, and the Shaman Drum Bookshop were all going strong. Today, Amazon sells thousands of other items. It turns out that bookselling was how Bezos perfected a new type of shopping: an Internet-based, home-delivered, customer service-oriented model that changed the way millions of Americans buy the things they want and need.

Customers could buy the latest James Patterson book on Monday and be reading it on Tuesday. It seemed perfect. But Bezos, knowing the book business was in trouble, thanks to high costs and slim profits, decided to reinvent it himself. “Bezos looked at this and said, ‘We have to do this now because no one else will,’ ” says Marion Maneker, former publisher of HarperBusiness and writer for TheBigMoney.com’s “The Kindle Chronicles.”

Sony has two e-book readers—Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition (shown here in red) that must be plugged into a computer, for those who enjoy such tinkering. Photo courtesy Sony Electronics, Inc.

Amazon’s Kindle uses a wireless service called Whispernet to connect to the Kindle bookstore, where many of the 300,000 books are just $9.99, and thousands of classics are free. Of course, they’re not books — they’re files wirelessly sent to your Kindle. “You can think of a book and have it 60 seconds later,” says Bezos.
You can also buy subscriptions to newspapers, magazines, and favorite Web sites. The latest Kindle, the DX ($489 as of June 2009), has the largest screen of any reader, almost as big as a sheet of letter paper. It holds over 3,500 books in memory. There is also the smaller Kindle 2 ($299 as of July 2009), which has a paperback-sized screen. Both are about as thick as a weekly newsmagazine and a little heavier. The battery lasts up to two weeks on one charge.

The Kindle will never be the same as a book. But as Bob says, “The Kindle makes reading easier, faster, more enjoyable and yes, cheaper.” Bob, I should note, is a midcareer editor as addicted to the printed word as anyone I know. His adoption of the Kindle makes me think that I, who grew up on the cusp of the Internet Revolution, almost missed the boat! But the more time I spend with the Kindle, the more I agree with him when he says, “I thought I loved books. After I bought my Kindle, I realized that what I really loved was reading.”

Even though you can plug the Kindle into your computer, it’s simpler to use it as a stand-alone device. But Sony has two e-book readers—Reader Pocket Edition ($199.99 as of August 09) and Reader Touch Edition ($299.99 as of August 09) that must be plugged into a computer, for those who enjoy such tinkering.

Whether you bought Eat, Pray, Love from Sony’s online bookstore or downloaded War and Peace free from Project Gutenberg, using Sony’s software, you can transfer both onto the Sony Readers, which can each store 350 books.

Amazon and Sony, with their brand recognition, claim the largest market share of e-readers, but that could change. Hearst, the magazine and newspaper publisher, is developing a competing device. And a company called Plastic Logic has teamed up with Barnes & Noble. Don’t worry; the reader you pick won’t limit your reading material, says Matt Shatz, vice president of digital operations for Random House. “We want to enable authors to be read by as many people as possible,” a view shared by all major publishers.

Best of all, you may not even have to buy a device in order to use one. The next time you stay in a high-end hotel or fly on a plane, a reader preloaded with your favorite newspapers and magazines might be waiting for you as a courtesy. Or, your son or granddaughter could bring one home from school: Amazon is conducting five college trials with students whose textbooks are all on the Kindle.

Think of the millions of pages of saved paper, the thousands of idle trucks, the barrels of unspilt ink: It’s clear that e-book readers are not just black and white, but green, as in good for the environment.

Amazon, Sony, and others want voracious readers of every age and technical ability to be their customers, so they are focused on usability. Their devices are so new it’s unfair to say none are perfect. But they are always usable and sometimes brilliant. All the companies I spoke with say their readers are meant for anybody who loves the printed word.

If you’re not in any rush to buy one, the next generation of readers could sport color screens in less than a year. And Apple is preparing to launch an “iTablet” — part iPod, part reader — as soon as this Christmas. The more big companies competing, the cheaper and better e-books will become.

The biggest hurdle e-readers face is the suspension of disbelief. No one, says Andrew Sivori of Sony, ever thinks an e-book reader is going to be as good as a book. Then they try one. Like a monk holding a Gutenberg Bible, they realize everything changes.

More: Amazon Kindle 2 Review by Dr. Earl Conn

E-Books: A Good Read The Saturday Evening Post