Rostenberg and Stern, rare-book dealers, single Jewish women and lifelong friends, continue the story begun in Old Books, Rare Friends
with this inspiring, moving chronicle of a friendship and moving personal account of the 20th century. The authors, now nearing their 90s, describe their battles and victories in the changing world. In "The Men We Did Not Marry," the authors list their early boyfriends (lawyers and doctors, an older teacher, a misogynist, a commitment-phobe and so on); Stern ends with, "My six men were six reasons I would never marry.... I was still a single woman in a man's world." Instead, they made a home together in a house "filled with light and love, with warmth and air." The pair witnesses the emergence of a younger clientele less well-versed in classics than the previous generation. They describe their European "book-hunt" in 1947, before postwar rebuilding occurred—"we had seen... one of the most cataclysmic of changed worlds"—and, at the end of the 20th century, they track industry and broader cultural changes by, for instance, the sale of a rare book for an astonishing $12,000 on eBay (the authors had made what they thought was a fair bid of $960). "Bookends
is not only the title of this book. It is our very nature. Bookends support books and come in pairs. And that is the life we have led," proclaim the dauntless friends. As they near the end of their long, distinguished and energetic lives, Stern and Rostenberg know that the world as they've known it is also ending. But throughout their story, they remain convinced that, just as their partnership has endured, so will the printed word. (July)
