From: "SANFORD G THATCHER" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 21:48:29 -0500 Was it published at a trade discount by Yale? If not, that's why you didn't find it. Also, chains like B&N usually follow a policy of having a book on the shelves for 90 days, and if a copy isn't sold in that period, it goes back to the publishers as a return for credit. You're much more likely to find it in stock at an independent bookstore like University Press Books in Berkeley. Sandy Thatcher On Sun, Jan 14, 2018 07:15 PM LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > >From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]> >Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 16:45:14 -0700 > >I'm a book person, but I realized today that I haven't been in a Barnes and >Noble in . . . six months? a year? So I stopped at the one in Tempe AZ, >bustling on Sunday afternoon. > >Of course I noticed that most of the store was taken up by merchandising >and merchandise. It's a good thing that a quarter of the store is designed >to get children reading, and not bad that there's a large DVD section. >Lots of tables beckon me with deals and remainders and "must reads" (I >could make no sense out of that table at all). I settled down to look for >new releases and to check a few favorite sections. > >Sections first: I counted shelves for "History", "Fiction and Literature", >and then separately shelves for the other genres of fiction (Mystery, >Romance, Manga, Graphic, Teen, Sci-FI, etc.). History was a bit masculine >and presentist for my taste (1/3 US, 1/3 "War", 1/3 "World", heavily >emphasizing politics, empires, statesmen), but for every one book on the >history shelves, there were five on the rather less distressing "Fiction >and Literature" shelves. (Jane Austen had a whole shelf, there were half a >dozen well-chosen Nabokov titles, but no Proust.) But the surprise was >that the *other* fiction shelves comprised twice as many volumes as the >supposedly main section. So for every history book, there were five >"Fiction and Literature", and ten more fiction of genre fiction. > >And new releases? I know I'm idiosyncratic and old and crotchety, but >nothing, and I mean nothing, appealed to me or spoke of itself as an >interesting new book that a body should at least know *about*. Familiar >brands, superficial topics, scandal, sensation, and the like. So I made a >point of asking about one title, a new book by an old friend, Patrick >Deneen, *Why Liberalism Failed*, just out from Yale Press, 200 pages, a >very provocative and interesting argument about the way our 'conservatives' >and 'liberals' all represent a modern liberal strain of political thought >that has led us to inequality, populism, and worse. Not everybody's cup of >tea, but a remarkable success for being taken up in the last couple of days >separately by both David Brooks and Ross Douthat on the op-ed pages of the >NY Times, so much so that the hardcover is out of stock on Amazon and >listed as #214 best-selling overall there. Not only was it not in stock at >B&N (in a state of the union where one might expect at least a few readers >to find the title immediately agreeable), but it had never been in stock in >print and at this moment isn't expected to be. They could get an e-version. > >I draw no conclusions: just reporting. > >Jim O'Donnell >Arizona State University