The Seven Stairs: An Adventure of the Heart

by Stuart Brent

Book Overview

In a new, updated edition is the famous story of an ex-GI named Stuart Brent who turned his passion for reading into a bookstore that became a mecca for book lovers across America.

The Seven Stairs is Stuart Brent's exuberant memoir reveals the strategies and beliefs that made him one of the nation's most colorful and revered independent booksellers.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671673947
• ISBN13: 9780671673949
• Release Date: May 1989
• Publisher: Touchstone Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

book lovers and money

I like this book (about opening a Chicago bookshop in 1946), because it shows that people who love books often have no business knack at all, and they tend to be idealists, too, they cannot help it: Quote: " They bought many books that morning.... It was wonderful- but it was awful when I had to take their money!" "I am not interested in giving the public what it wants.... I have never had what the public wanted to read, and I lost out because of it.... I felt my job was to get people to jump- to read something, old or new, that could engage them in some real vision of human possibilities..." Boy, they don't make'em like that anymore. In 2006 no one could run a shop like that. Too bad!

The Seven Stairs by Brent Stuart

Good books by book sellers are hard to find, and this one is not only good, but definitely a pleasure to read. I wish it had included more details about how to succeed in the business of selling books, but I quickly realized that the author lived in an entirely different era than the one we have now of internet book selling. The author started in business at a time when the world was not sure that television would last and many wiser than he had not survived in the business of selling books.Originally published in 1962, this book is the autobiography of Brent Stuart, a successful Chicago book seller. His venture into book selling started after World War II, when as a young man fresh out of the Army, he opened a small book and music store. He admits he knew almost nothing about business, and he shares what he learned while struggling to survive. He also shares about the people he knew, many of whom were very helpful to him in his early years. He drops a lot of names, no doubt many of whom were very well-known in that era, among the most famous of whom are Katherine Hepburn, Gore Vidal, and Ernest Hemingway. Unfortunately, the book does not have an Index, which would be helpful when one is looking to find an interesting part that is worth reading aloud to friends.One of the parts of the book I found most interesting was his account of his business and social dealings with Dr. Lionel Blitzsten, a wealthy psychoanalyst. Dr. Blitzsten encouraged and helped him to develop a current catalog of psychiatric books, and the sales of those books greatly helped his business to prosper. He describes his first impression of Dr. Blitzsten in almost poetic yet graphic details: "What was really arresting (and somewhat terrifying) about this fat, puffing little man was the face. Above the glasses, the skull seemed all forehead; beneath, the clean-shaven skin was baby pink and the mouth shaped like a rosebud and just as red. That was it, the mouth -- and when he spoke, the voice was musical, no longer deep, but rather high in pitch." Dr. Lionel hosted social gatherings which many clamored to attend. The author defines the social atmosphere at Dr. Lionel's home as a coterie, and his eloquent description of it is:"The machinery of a coterie is simple; the reasons behind its operation and its subtle influence on the lives of those drawn into its orbit are complex almost beyond endurance. Essentially, the coterie consists of a number of people who hold similar views on unimportant things. Everyone admitted must observe a cardinal prohibition: to say nothing fundamental about anything. All must follow the leader, employ a common stock of expressions, adopt the same mannerisms, profess the same prejudices, affect the same bearing, and recognize a common bond of impenetrable superficiality."The author also provides details about early television in Chicago and his role in a daily TV program title