Minivan of the Revolution

About Lorne Bair

I’m a bookseller by default. Like more than a few of my colleagues, I came late to the trade, after having tried many other things and discovering myself to be unemployable (we all say this; I think we think it sounds like, “Yeah, I’m a man the law could not tame,” but really – how sad is that?). Every couple of weeks I publish medium long-form “Mile Marker” pieces about my journey as a bookseller – you’ll find these gathered on this site under the general category “The Trip.” Like my life, the entries don’t follow any reliable chronological or narrative sequence. I don’t expect anyone to take much interest in my personal story. I make it public as a way of holding myself to account.

My writings on books and the book trade, meanwhile, will be found to be essentially useless from a practical point of view. After more than three decades buying and selling old books, I’ve come to the conclusion that any technical advice I have to offer to other booksellers is best dispensed on request. I have many thoughts on the non-technical aspects of the trade, however, and I air them here without apology and with no expectation of acknowledgment or reward.

So, you’ve stumbled upon a site conceived in vanity and devoted to superfluity. There are already an endless number of “Rare Book” blogs, a few of them well-written and filled with useful information. I can think of no good reason to add another one. Yet here we are.

To save you much reading, a roughly chronological précis of The Trip looks like this:

I began my first book business, The Mad Fergus Book Company, in Eugene, Oregon in 1993. Hard as it is to fathom now, on-line bookselling wasn’t yet a thing; I scouted books at estate sales and thrift shops around the Pacific Northwest, and quoted them to dealers via offers typed with an IBM Selectric onto pre-stamped postal cards. Some weeks I sold a book. Most weeks I didn’t.

In 1996 I opened a small second-hand bookshop in Winchester, Virginia, called The Satisfied Mind. People seemed to like the place, but unlike its namesake it was not a commercial success. I sold the inventory and fixtures on September 10th, 2001, and my transformation into a specialist antiquarian bookseller began.

I joined the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA) in 2006.

Lorne Bair Rare Books hired its first part-time employee in 2009. Our first full-time employee arrived in late 2012 – a genius bookseller named Amir Naghib, who helped me transform the business from notional to actual viability, and then into a small degree of prominence, which is not the same as eminence. In 2013 Amir and I moved Lorne Bair Rare Books out of my house and into its current premises, a 6,000 square foot office and showroom near Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia.

The main showroom at Lorne Bair Rare Books. All are welcome, just give us some advance warning – we don’t have a storefront, and we don’t keep reliable office hours because we’re driving around in the Van an awful lot.

More geniuses followed: Hélène Golay (now head of the rare book department at Capitol Hill Books); Francesca Blom and Ashley Spice, photographer/editors extraordinaires; Tess Goodman (now Head of Special Collections at Wesleyan University), Jonathan Kearns (all the way from London – one must sometimes venture far to find a genius), Brooklyn Rosenberger (who came as an intern from the local U., took one look at the book business and amazingly didn’t run screaming in the other direction); Lee Ann Dransfield, who as our bookkeeper has been given endless reasons to run away, and more still as my partner of forty years. This cast of characters has helped to keep Lorne Bair Rare Books moving forward, in a mostly thriving sort of way, through all kinds of fog and bad weather. I talk about all of them, or will, in these pages. The rare book profession attracts the most wonderful people.

It’s fair at this point to admit that I began this blog in 2009. The project didn’t survive the transition to our new premises. I never stopped writing, I just stopped posting. This falls under a general typology of regrets that are classifiable as answers to the question: had I only kept going, what might I have made? It’s unhealthy to ask this question too often. For whatever reason, and for whatever it’s worth, I intend to stick it out longer this time. Maybe until the end of my life, which doesn’t seem nearly such an abstract concept now as it did in 2009.

In 2011, I joined the faculty of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS), an annual week-long intensive workshop for members of the rare book community, popularly referred to as “Boot Camp for Booksellers.” In 2017 I took over from Rob Rulon-Miller as Director of the seminar, a role in which I remained until 2025, when Garrett Scott assumed the mantle. I’m now President of the Antiquarian Book School Foundation, a non-profit corporation which oversees and funds both the Seminar and its related entity, the Diverse Voices Fellowship. I love selling books, but my work with CABS is the most important and rewarding work I do. I’ll say it again: the rare book profession attracts the most wonderful people. I’ve been rewarded by getting to meet a lot of them over my fifteen-year association with CABS.

Aside from the personal stuff, I write occasional highly opinionated essays on the book trade, and on “trade” more generally (gathered on this site under the category “Detours”); new discoveries that especially excite me (“Shiny”); book fair reviews (“Reviews”); and shout-outs to colleagues I feel are doing interesting things (“Fellow Travelers”).

I’m glad you’ve found your way to the Minivan. Apologies in advance for the occasionally bumpy ride – you’ll find we spend most of our time on unpaved roads.