ABC’s Christmas of 1973 was quite eventful. Mitch, who had co-founded ABC the year before, went back to Baltimore for the holidays and left me in charge while we were renovating. He and the landlord, Jacob Kroonenberg, had agreed to level out the ground floor, which had been split-level, and to [...]
written by Lynn The wish to celebrate Thanksgiving with booklovers, staff and people homesick for that Thanksgiving experience springs from a homey image of people from sea to shining sea, from prison canteens to five-star hotels, all eating the same menu at the same time. There’s always room at the [...]
written by Lynn Following Oprah’s initiative, in 2003 we launched our first Community Read. It had been done before in Chicago, when the entire city—media, government, library and school system—got together to encourage everybody in Chicago to read the same book during the same summer. It worked wonderfully! People spoke about [...]
To mark our 50th anniversary, we’re going back through the archives to share some of our more memorable stories. “1997: ABC at the Moscow International Book Fair” written by Lynn After watching Dutch media magnate and Moscow Times founder Derk Sauer’s recent interview on the Dutch Summer Nights [...]
To mark our 50th anniversary, we’re going back through the archives to share some of our more memorable stories. “Shoes” written by Lynn In 1972, co-founder Mitch Crossfield decided to have the attic at Kalverstraat 158 converted into an apartment so that he could live above the store. [...]
written by Lynn ABC’s co-founder Mitch Crossfield and most of our male staff in the early years were gay. That’s because Amsterdam was open, as opposed to Belgium and Spain, where homosexuality was still forbidden, so Mitch was able to hire gay booksellers from Amsterdam’s teeming population. Bookseller Harry displayed several [...]
