The Mom and Pop Store

By Robert Spector

Book review by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.

Let me begin by telling you what this book is not.  First, it is not a history nor a background study of mom and pop stores.  One reviewer at Amazon.com commented on precisely this aspect: “If you're looking for a book to give you some background, data and understanding of small businesses, how they operate and how they fit in and affect the US economy, unfortunately this is not it.  It will not tell you, as its title suggests, how mom & pops are ‘surviving and thriving.’”

Second, it is not at all concise.  Rather, it rambles a bit.  

Third, it is not the least bit analytical.  He has no interest in writing a rational, logical, or organized approach to the topic.  He has, instead, put together a love story (or love stories) that reveal the passion, creativity, and tenacity small business owners demonstrate — in the Studs Terkel tradition — in order to survive.

One reviewer at Amazon.com, A. Westerman, writes, “Robert Spector has written a homage to the small, family-owned business -- the type rooted in the American psyche and as iconic as a Norman Rockwell illustration. Spector hopes to combat the notion that the family store is, much like The Saturday Evening Post, fading from the contemporary scene.

“The book, part memoir of the author's childhood at the family butchershop, part tribute to others family-owned businesses, Spector seeks to make the case that family shops aren't leaving the retail landscape. He does this with varying degrees of success: the profiles of business owners and their family members are heart-warming and interesting, but he also makes claims that are not supported by evidence. I can't say he's wrong when he talks about the unique characteristics family-owned businesses, such as old-fashioned values of hard work and community. Yet he doesn't have any other evidence but anecdotes to support him.”

This 291-page book includes five pages of notes, two-and-one-half pages of “selected bibliography,” and a 12-page index.  However, the book is a series of stories (including his own at the family’s butcher shop in Perth Amboy, New Jersey) — anecdotal in nature — that tends to meander (a bit) as he pieces together a portrait of mom and pop stores in the U.S. today.  I found it somewhat interesting but tedious.

This book is available at Amazon.com: The mom & pop store: How the unsung heroes of the American economy are surviving and thriving

Theodor SEUSS Geisel (Lives and Legacies)

Book Review by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.

Theodor SEUSS Geisel (Lives and Legacies)

By Donald E. Pease

From the English Department, Dartmouth University, website : “Donald Pease, professor of English, Avalon Foundation Chair of the Humanities, Chair of the Dartmouth Liberal Studies Program and winner of the 1981 Distinguished Teaching Award at Dartmouth, is an authority on nineteenth and twentieth-century American literature and literary theory. In the summer of 1986 he brought the School of Criticism and Theory to Dartmouth.  In 1996 he founded the Dartmouth Institute in American Studies and in 1997 he has also served as Academic Director of the Alumni College program.”

Despite his outstanding credentials, this is not an academic book.  It is a readable, factual, well-documented, thorough, and highly interesting book.

These are the first two paragraphs of his biography, published at the website, “Dr. Suess National Memorial : “Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known to the world as the beloved Dr. Seuss, was born in 1904 on Howard Street in Springfield, Massachusetts. Ted's father, Theodor Robert, and grandfather were brewmasters in the city. His mother, Henrietta Seuss Geisel, often soothed her children to sleep by "chanting" rhymes remembered from her youth. Ted credited his mother with both his ability and desire to create the rhymes for which he became so well known.

Although the Geisels enjoyed great financial success for many years, the onset of World War I and Prohibition presented both financial and social challenges for the German immigrants. Nonetheless, the family persevered and again prospered, providing Ted and his sister, Marnie, with happy childhoods.”

The only review of the book posted on Amazon.com when I wrote my review, is this 5-star one by  A. Nazaryan, who nicely sums up all that I have to say about the book: “Highly readable, deeply informative, this is a lively take on the life of our most famous children's author. Much less academic - or heavy - than previous works on Seuss, it covers both his life and work while unraveling aspects of his life readers probably don't know much about: his relationship with his mother (who gave him the name Seuss), his rowdy days at Dartmouth, his work for the New Yorker, his first wife's suicide and, of course, how he came up with some of the most memorable characters in all of literature.”

The book is fantastic, the additional illustrations are a terrific addition, and I highly recommend this book.

This book is available from Amazon.com: Theodor SEUSS Geisel (Lives and Legacies)