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Member: markell

CollectionsYour library (5,530), Currently reading (13), All collections (5,530)

ReviewsNone

Tags20c (2,559), political theory (2,215), europe (1,982), philosophy (1,933), history (1,779), united states (1,690), 19c (1,117), germany (926), britain (770), politics (608) — see all tags

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud

GroupsChicagoans, Philosophy and Theory, The University of Chicago

Favorite bookstores57th Street Books, 871 Fine Arts, After Word Books, Argosy Books, Atlantic Bookshop, Atticus Books, Avenue Victor Hugo, Bibliomania, Black Oak Books - Berkeley, Black Swan Books, Bolerium Books, Book Culture, Booklegger's Used Books, Bookman's Alley, Bookworks, Brattle Book Shop, Bryn Mawr Bookstore, Builder's Booksource, Cartesian Bookstore, Chicago Rare Book Center, City Lights Bookstore, Commonwealth Books, Green Apple Books, Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Hackenberg Booksellers, Harvard Book Store, Harvard University Press Display Room, Jeff Maser, Bookseller, Labyrinth Books New Haven, Lame Duck Books, Lucy Parsons Center, McIntyre and Moore Booksellers (Cambridge, MA), McNally Jackson Booksellers (New York), Midtown Scholar Bookstore, Moe's Books, Museum Shop of the Art Institute of Chicago, Myopic Books, O'Gara and Wilson, Booksellers, Pegasus Books, Pegasus Downtown, Pendragon Books, Powell's - Burnham Park, Powell's - Hyde Park, Powell's - Lakeview, Prairie Avenue Bookshop, Printers Row Fine & Rare Books, Ravenswood Used Books, Schoenhof's Foreign Books, Selected Works Used Books and Sheet Music, Seminary Co-op Bookstore, Serendipity Books, Shakespeare & Co. Books, Strand Bookstore, The Gallery Bookstore, Three Lives & Company, Turtle Island Book Shop, Twelfth Street Books, Unabridged Bookstore, University Press Books, William Stout Architectural Books

Favorite librariesArt Institute of Chicago - Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, Berkeley Public Library - Central Library, Boston Public Library (Central Library, Copley Square), British Library, Doe Library - UC Berkeley, Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, Howison Philosophy Library - UC Berkeley, New York Public Library - Humanities and Social Sciences Library, New York University - The Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, Research Library at the Getty Research Institute, Stevenson Library, Bard College, University of Chicago - Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago - William Rainey Harper Library

About meI'm a professor of political theory at the University of Chicago and a compulsive maker of lists. I probably spend more time reading books than pursuing them, but just barely.

About my library• Mostly a working scholarly library, centered on the humanities and humanistic social sciences, especially political theory and political science, philosophy, Marxism and critical social theory, modern European and American history, radical politics, classics and ancient history, Judaica, literary theory and criticism, and art history. Also includes the expected assortment of novels, poetry, cookbooks, travel guides, and other merit badges of the late modern bourgeoisie.

• What I'm collecting these days: neglected classics of twentieth-century social and political thought in early editions; Arendtiana; runs of some leftish political and literary and periodicals. And anything else I can't resist.

• Turn-ons: crisp text printed from metal type, decent gutters, sewn bindings, handfeel. Turn-offs: digitally printed books, paperbacks longer than 300 pages or so. Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci.

• Nope, I haven't read them all.

• The library was founded in 1987, when Leslie Lipson, then a professor emeritus of Political Science at Berkeley who was teaching my freshman seminar, handed me a couple of spare desk copies of good books that he had lying around his office and said: "I assume you'll be starting a library?"

• With the advent of LibraryThing Local, much of my list of "sources" has moved on up to "favorite bookstores," above. But that's (mostly and decreasingly) limited to bookstores that still exist. So here's a memorial to some favorite places now defunct, many of which were gone before LT Local came to be....

In memoriam: Acorn Books (San Francisco), Arlington Books (Arlington, MA), Avenue Victor Hugo (Boston, now online-only), Berkeley Book Consortium (Berkeley), Black Oak Books (Berkeley, after a long decline), The Bookcase (Cambridge, MA), The Bookcellar (Cambridge, MA), Canterbury Books (Cambridge, MA), Cody's Books (Telegraph Avenue, Fourth Street, and Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, and Union Square in San Francisco, which was a crappy idea to begin with), Columbus Books (San Francisco), Ex Libris (Chicago), Holmes Books (Oakland), House of Sarah Books (Cambridge, MA), Pangloss, in its various forms (Cambridge and Boston, MA), Prairie Avenue Books (Chicago), Rain Dog Books (Chicago), Starr Book Shop (Cambridge, MA, now online-only?), and Wordsworth (Cambridge, MA).

• What? I warned you about the lists.

Homepagehttp://home.uchicago.edu/users/~pmarkell/index.html

Real namePatchen Markell

LocationChicago, Illinois, USA

Favorite authorsNone

Account typepublic, lifetime

Connection NewsConnection News

URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/markell (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/markell (library)

Common KnowledgeSeries (261), Awards (308), Characters (2344), Places (618)

Member sinceOct 27, 2005

Currently readingThe Human Condition by Hannah Arendt
Between facts and norms : contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy by Jürgen Habermas
Ralph Ellison : a biography by Arnold Rampersad
Pierre, or, The ambiguities ; Israel Potter : his fifty years of exile ; The piazza tales ; The confidence-man : his masquerade ; Uncollected prose ; Billy Budd, sailor : (an inside narrative) by Herman Melville
Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York by Adam Gopnik
The prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
The Mountains of California by John Muir
Both ways is the only way I want it by Maile Meloy
A new literary history of America by Greil Marcus
Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey by Bill Brewster
Encyclopedia of pasta by Oretta Zanini De Vita
Thelonious Monk : the life and times of an American original by Robin D. G. Kelley
The breaks by Richard Price
show all (13)