ABOUT THE FILM
Antiquarian booksellers are part scholar, part detective and part businessperson, and their personalities and knowledge are as broad as the material they handle. They also play an underappreciated yet essential role in preserving history. THE BOOKSELLERS takes viewers inside their small but fascinating world, populated by an assortment of obsessives, intellects, eccentrics and dreamers.
Executive produced by Parker Posey, the film features interviews with some of the most important dealers in the business, as well as prominent collectors, auctioneers, and writers such as Fran Lebowitz, Susan Orlean, Kevin Young and Gay Talese. Both a loving celebration of book culture and a serious exploration of the future of the book, the film also examines technology’s impact on the trade, the importance of books as physical objects, the decline of used and rare bookstores, collecting obsessions, and the relentless hunt for the next great find.
And perhaps best of all, THE BOOKSELLERS offers a rare glimpse of many unique and remarkable objects, including the most expensive book ever sold, Da Vinci’s The Codex Leicester; handwritten Borges manuscripts; jeweled bindings; books bound in human flesh; essential early hip-hop documents; accounts of polar expeditions published with samples of real wooly mammoth fur; and many more.
FEATURED NYC BOOKSELLERS
Dave Bergman
The “smallest dealer with the biggest books”
Adina Cohen, Naomi Hample and Judith Lowry
The three sisters of the Argosy Book Store
Jim Cummins
The consummate bookseller, who owns over 400,000 books
Arthur Fournier
Specialist in late 20th century materials and transformative cultural movements
Stephen Massey
Founder of Christie’s NY Book Department, long-time appraiser on Antiques Roadshow, and auctioneer of the most valuable book ever sold, Da Vinci's Hammer codex
Bibi Mohamed
One of the preeminent dealers in leather bound books
Heather O’Donnell
Owner of Honey & Wax Booksellers and co-founder of the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize
Rebecca Romney
Pawn Stars go-to expert, co-owner of Type Punch Matrix, and co-founder of the Honey & Wax Prize
Justin Schiller
Pioneering children’s book specialist
Adam Weinberger
Frequent Pawn Stars guest and intrepid book hunter
Henry Wessells
Poet, writer, sci-fi collector, Arabist and bookseller
ADDITIONAL PARTICIPANTS
Syreeta Gates
Hip-hop archivist and collector and documentary filmmaker
Glenn Horowitz
Top archive handler (Nabokov, Dylan, Garcia Marquez)
Erik DuRon and Jess Kuronen
Owners of the revived Left Bank Books
Fran Lebowitz
Author, speaker, and cultural commentator
Tom Lecky
Owner of Riverrun Books and former Head of Printed Books & Manuscripts at Christie’s
Nicholas D. Lowry
Antiques Roadshow appraiser and President of Swann Auction Galleries
Ed Maggs
Dealer from the venerable London firm Maggs Bros.
Susan Orlean
New Yorker staff writer and author of seven books including The Orchid Thief and The Library Book (New York Times Notable Book of 2018)
William Reese
Widely considered the greatest American rare book dealer of his generation
Caroline Schimmel
Owner of one of the world's most important collections of women writers
Sunday Steinkirchner
Co-owner of B&B Rare Books in New York
Gay Talese
Journalist and bestselling author of fourteen books
Jay Walker
Priceline.com founder and owner of the Walker Library of The History of Human Imagination, one of the greatest personal libraries in the world
Rob Warren
New York dealer and owner of the now closed Skyline Books
Nancy Bass Wyden
Co-owner of The Strand bookstore
Kevin Young
Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, author, and Poetry Editor of The New Yorker
Lizzy Young
Expert on culinary books with a newly opened store in Brooklyn
Michael Zinman
One of the most influential collectors of Americana