A01=Laurence Roth
American studies
Author_Laurence Roth
autobiography
biography
bookstore
Bryan Cheyette
Category=JBSR
Category=KNTP
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
Category=WQH
community
cultural studies
ebook
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
father
general interest
hardcover
History
Ilan Stavans
independent bookstore
indie bookstore
J. Roth Bookseller
J. RothBookseller of Fine & Scholarly Judaica
Jewish
Jewish culture
Jewish experience
Jewish Studies
Josh Lambert
Laura Levitt
Laurence Roth
Los Angeles
memoir
New Jersey
New York
New York City
NJ
nonfiction
NY
NYC
publishing
Roth
Rutgers
Rutgers University
scholarly Judaica
small bookstore
small business
social science
true story
unpacking
US History
Product details
- ISBN 9781978836600
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 09 Sep 2025
- Publisher: Rutgers University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Unpacking My Father’s Bookstore brings to life the history of J. Roth / Bookseller of Fine & Scholarly Judaica, which was a microcosm of the Los Angeles Jewish community from 1966 to 1994 and one of the premier Jewish bookstores in the United States. Blending critical analysis with a personal account of growing up in his father’s bookstore, and connecting both to larger forces that helped shape Jewish and American book retailing in the twentieth-century, Laurence Roth crafts a richly felt narrative about his family’s Jewish experience in America. It is a reminder, too, that while most independent bookstores like J. Roth Bookseller disappear from history, these retailers often had outsized effects on their communities. Breaking with conventional modes of scholarship, Unpacking My Father’s Bookstore tells a unique and troubled story that rarely gets told, one that is both personal and analytical, theoretical but rooted in the everyday.
LAURENCE ROTH is the Charles B. Degenstein Professor of English and director of the Jewish & Israel Studies Program and The Build Collaborative at Susquehanna University, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Inspecting Jews: American Jewish Detective Stories (Rutgers University Press, 2003), and coeditor, with Nadia Valman, of The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Jewish Cultures.
