Carla Cohen, owner of the Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington DC – one of my favorite bookstores in the country – recently passed on.  Before moving on…she had the following interaction with one of her customers (this anecdote is from a tribute shared on the Politics & Prose website):

Cohen sometimes responded to customers in a less-then-politic way: “Why would you want to read that; it’s dumb,” she would say to a customer asking for a book of which she disapproved. “You would enjoy this a lot more — and it’s a far better book.”

Now that is a bookseller, par excellence: she knew her stuff (books) and her customers.

Farewell Carla, I appreciate all that you have taught me (Adam) from afar.