by Iris Sharing food has always been an important part of any Thanksgiving celebration. At ABC, we host a Baked Goods Potluck in all three stores to represent that part of Thanksgiving Day. But starting in 1994 and lasting until well in the 2000s, we used to organize a full-blown dinner! [...]
by Iris Our Leidschendam store in the Westfield Mall of the Netherlands opened its doors in 2021. It was pandemic times and the many extra rules and regulations didn't make for the smoothest of starts. But four years later we're still here, and it's well past time to bring you along [...]
In Memoriam: Derk Sauer On July 31, 2025, we heard that Derk Sauer, founder of The Moscow Times, died. This brought memories of our participation in the 1997 Moscow Book Fair (read our blog post about it here). We ran a small ad in The Moscow Times announcing that the American [...]
ABC’s co-director Martijn was a guest on the Bookshop Podcast! As an international podcast, The Bookshop Podcast has a wider reach than just the Netherlands, so it's a great opportunity for the world to know more about our small enterprise. With the title "Exploring the American Book Center: Martijn Meerts on Bookstore [...]
By Naomi When I tell people I work at a bookstore, their first reaction is usually: “It must be so nice to get to read all day.” That would be nice indeed, but that’s not what I actually do. Even though I don’t get to lounge around reading all day, I [...]
Written by Lynn I arrived in Amsterdam in 1972 with some history in the American women’s liberation movement, had even started an organization for equal pay back in the day, and sometimes collaborated with the gay liberation activists. But living my perception of a liberated life in a foreign culture was [...]
by Lynn While going through boxes of old ABC papers, I recently ran across a book review ripped out of a 1989 edition of the newspaper Het Parool. The reviewer, Johannes van Dam, saw The UnDutchables as a fresh take on Dutch life written by an American and British couple. [...]
By Lynn What are you giving thanks for this Thanksgiving? At ABC, we’re thankful for our community of booklovers, both customers and staff. I’m also thankful for the Iroquois Confederacy—the model for our democratic Constitution. We have celebrated Thanksgiving at our stores since 1989 as a way [...]
Written by Lynn I remember meeting Joe for the first time during the summer of 1973 in Amsterdam. Mitch Crossfield, one of our two founding partners, had gone off for vacation. The next morning, a young American boy of about 22 with a full black beard and long, straight, coarse [...]
Written by Lynn One day in 1986, a man approached me at the cash desk and asked, “Wouldn’t you like to have a bigger store?” Well, yes. “The Mothercare company just down the street is pulling out,” he told me. “The man who agreed to take over the rent has backed [...]
