Robin's Bookstore is closing after over 70 years in business. It's a huge bummer in a season of bummers (we're having a real "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times" fall, huh?).

Just last month we heard Larry Robin speak at the Free Library's Banned Books Week program, telling stories of him facing down the DA over threatened confiscations of Henry Miller books. Robin's is an institution, and provided a huge service to the city: it was central, was a general-purpose bookstore that also had a particularly deep selection of both fiction and nonfiction African-American titles, had books at a range of price levels, and was consistently supportive of progressive (and radical!) political activity.

I didn't actually believe it was closing when my sister's boyfriend told me at Thanksgiving. It seemed impossible when the store had weathered so much. But it seems like it's going to happen: books at 20% off now, going to 50% on January 5th, and the store closing on January 31st.

We all know that independent bookstores are barely hanging on. Amazon discounts are pretty huge. I buy some new hardbacks at a discount online during the year, and feel guilty about it. But at the holidays I go to Robin's and Joseph Fox and buy stacks of books at full price. I totally owe it to them for having great staff and displays that make me want ten times as many books as I came in for.

So: go to Robin's and buy holiday presents there. Buy piles of them. Stock up on children's books for the next ten birthdays of all the kids in your family. Etc. You might not be able to keep the store open, but you can help Larry Robin out just a bit after all the years the bookstore has been there for us.

And after the holidays please please please think twice before going to Barnes and Noble or Borders. There's Joseph Fox in Rittenhouse, probably the best-stocked bookstore I've ever been to and they'll order anything for you in a couple days. Bookhaven in Fairmount, with cats and endless corridors of every used book ever. Brickbat on Fourth and Bainbridge, a small selection of all interesting perfect books. Giovanni's Room on Pine Street, with great queer titles and an awesome kid's section. Wooden Shoe for radical literature and zines on Fifth above South. And more.

The story of Robin's is also the story of how if one person, one bookshop, doesn't stock things, you really might not be able to get them anywhere. It was true with now-classics that were once subject to obscenity prosecution. It's been true more recently with some of the African-American and political titles Robin's carried. And it's true about the many books filling up our independent bookstores that don't warrant shelf space at the chains.

Lately the 60s have been back. Primary debate questions about Bill Ayers (thanks Hillary). 'Black panthers' at Philadelphia polling stations (Fox News got me all excited, but they stayed away from Moore College of Art where I was stationed--apparently art students are not the vanguard of the revolution). Older friends and relatives wishing that RFK was alive to hear our new president's words on election night. We even have an Alinsky-trained president!

Okay, so it is not the 1960s, it's 2008. But clearly there are a lot of battles still to fight. And David Kairys has a lot to teach us about battles old and new.

If you haven't yet, get the Camden 28 documentary from TLA or Netflix. It starts out slow, but when you get to the part where Kairys has the entire Vietnam war on trial, it's a beautiful and crazy thing to see. Howard Zinn testifies about the role of citizen dissent in the American polity. A slide show indicts inner city disinvestment at a time where American money and lives were being bled overseas. And when the mother of one protestor, who lost her other son in Vietnam, testifies about her stance on the war, it is electric and maybe the most moving thing I have ever seen on film.

David Kairys talks TONIGHT, November 10, at 6 pm.

Robin's Bookstore is at 108 S. 13th Street, by 13th and Sansom.

Tonight I'm excited to welcome my long-time friend, co-blogger, and political ally Michael Connery to Philadelphia. Mike, who founded Music for America and who blogs at Future Majority, where I also blog at times, will be at Robbins Bookstore from 6-7 talking about his new book Youth to Power: How Today's Young Voters Are Building Tomorrow's Progressive Majority. If you can't get the basic idea from the title, here's a description from Amazon:

I've been all tied in knots about the party I want to see emerge and the DLC-influenced centrist one that I fear is sticking around. It's the "Clinton referendum" question, the worry that Obama's hope-and-unity just means more unproductive compromise. And all this at a time when the Republican discourse is kind of insane (one odd tax proposal after another, somehow following Bin Laden to the gates of Hell and shooting him there) and Paul Krugman has convincingly argued for a new constructive embrace of partisan-ism.

Anyway, this Thursday, Glenn Hurowitz is reading from his just-published book, Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party, at Robin's Bookstore.

The canned summary:

Coming just in time for election season, Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party chronicles the extraordinary stories of five politicians and activists: three "progressive heroes" who exhibited rare political courage - and through it found unexpected political success, and two "spineless weasels" who embraced The Politics of Fear and rode it to ultimate failure.

The book reveals how Senator Paul Wellstone used his courage to overcome a quirky personality, an occasionally hysterical style and, most of all, an ideology considerably to the left of his constituents, eventually becoming a national hero.

It tells the dramatic story of how the same foundations and corporations that engineered the right-wing takeover of the Republican Party used junk political science to move Democrats to the right as well. Hurowitz shows how the legacy of Bill Clinton, widely proclaimed his generation's greatest political talent, will actually burden the Democratic Party and the progressive movement for decades to come.

A work of astounding insight, Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party promises to transform political discourse in 2008.

Given how some people feel about Paul Wellstone around here, I thought maybe some of you would like to come out.

Robin's Bookstore, 108 S. 13th Street (13th and Sansom)
Thursday, January 17 at 6 pm