For many progressive movements — whether for women’s or queer rights, racial justice, housing access, or the environment — that base of operations has been a bookstore. In her new book, The Radical Bookstore: Counterspace for Social Movements (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), Kinder takes a closer look at these purveyors of both printed material and social progress through close studies of 77 bookstores and similar establishments around the United States. She finds that retail — a facet of urban life that planners have historically seen as highly exclusionary — can also be an opportunity to bring people together.
