I've been in the rare book trade for over 25 years, co-founding The Manhattan Rare Book Company in 1999. What follows is a selection of a few current holdings I'm especially fond of.
The galley sheets printed at Bloomsbury on 25 February 1997, more than four months before publication, together with the correspondence that carried a rejected manuscript to worldwide phenomenon. Among the letters: the Charlie Bucket comparison by children's literary critic Fiona Waters that appeared on the back cover of every first printing of the first edition, shaping the emotional terms on which hundreds of millions of readers would first encounter Harry Potter. The galley sheets are the only known surviving copy of the earliest printing in any form.
What moves me about this archive is that it captures the precise moment before anyone knew. Two perceptive women recognized something extraordinary, and neither yet understood the scale of what they had seen.
Twenty-three manuscript notebooks, 2,868 pages, kept by Apple's first COO across the pivotal years 1983 to 1995, together with more than 1,000 Apple business documents, many annotated by John Sculley, Mike Markkula, Steve Jobs, and other luminaries. Primary documents from the Digital Revolution are exceedingly rare. Nothing of comparable scope has appeared on the market.
The digital revolution is the successor to what Johannes Gutenberg set in motion more than 500 years ago. As a bookseller, this is as good as it gets.
Twenty-six manuscript broadcast journals, over 12,000 pages, documenting more than 3,500 episodes of McBride's daily radio program between 1935 and 1954. At her peak she reached eight million listeners, roughly 20 percent of the total broadcast audience. She pioneered the conversational, host-centered platform that shapes every podcast and talk show today.
McBride is a largely forgotten giant, and that feels like an injustice worth correcting. This archive is the most comprehensive surviving record of how she built something entirely new.
Further holdings available. Inquiries welcome.
Coming soon: An archive documenting the birth of New Hollywood, with material that reveals how a generation of filmmakers reinvented American cinema; working storyboards by Buckminster Fuller integrating the geometric, planetary, and social foundations of Spaceship Earth, with Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, and Jiang Qing circled at the center; an Einstein mini notebook documenting a key phase of work toward General Relativity, and more.
I've been in the rare book trade for over 25 years, co-founding The Manhattan Rare Book Company in 1999. One of our first acquisitions was a 1685 Shakespeare Fourth Folio, bought sight unseen, bidding by phone at four in the morning — a Sotheby's sale in London. Our first printed catalogue, in 2001, featured that Folio alongside a first edition of Gatsby in the first state dust jacket.
These days my focus has shifted toward archives and manuscript material. Some offerings are in association with MRB; others I offer separately. I'm still buying more than I should, but less than I'd like.
What draws me is the living pulse. It's there if you let the material speak on its own terms — letters, manuscripts, documents that catch a hinge moment: a new idea, a private reckoning or revelation, a hidden fault line suddenly exposed, an artistic pivot, a newly surfaced document or archive that forces us to reconsider what we thought we knew. What strikes me every time — and I find it both eerie and thrilling — is that the people behind these documents almost never fully understood what they were part of. If you find the right material, curiosity and empathy will breathe new life into ink on paper.
I also co-host rarebookchat, a podcast about the rare book trade, with my MRB co-founder, Michael DiRuggiero. Michael and I have been having a good time talking about and trading rare books since last century, and we're still at it — so please give us a listen on whatever pod platform you call home.
And yes, I buy rare books. And manuscripts. And archives and entire collections.