It’s something that many of us have a bit more time for these days: buying books online (and, ideally, reading them). In this episode we’ll look into some of the quirks and peculiarities that shoppers might encounter on the internet, like books that are priced way too high, or the same book being sold in a really wild range of prices (do I want the $6 copy, or the $2000 copy?). It turns out that usually the culprit behind these discrepancies is a confused computer algorithm, rather than an ambitious human bookseller. We’ll also reveal some book buying tips and tricks, plus the Brattle’s famous haggling secret (“ask nicely”).
Brattlecast #86 - The Boy Soldier
The ROTC was phased out of many high schools and colleges during the Vietnam War, but is making a comeback today, for better or worse. We’ll take a look at the history of this controversial organization by way of a book that predates it: The Boy Soldier, a textbook of infantry tactics for school children, first published in 1863 and available now at the Brattle Book Shop. Plus, we’ll take a look behind the scenes, at this process of determining a price for an extremely rare book like this one, which can be harder to research than other sought after but relatively more common works.