“J. Roth Bookseller was a literary and cultural institution in Los Angeles’s Jewish community. Unpacking My Father’s Bookstore is testimony to the proposition that there is more to a bookstore than books. Roth describes the multi-generational journey that affixed this storefront’s imprint on America’s second-largest Jewish community.” —Zev Yaroslavsky, former Los Angeles County supervisor

“Unpacking my Father’s Bookstore serves as poignant testimony to the value of old-fashioned bookselling, a family business, and the transmission of Jewish knowledge through the generations—l’dor vador.” —Allegra Goodman, author of Isola 

“This isn’t only a paean to the legendary Los Angeles bookstore, where browsing was a hermeneutical activity, but a eulogy to a father-and-son relationship and a map of how Jewish knowledge circulated in America in the second half of the twentieth century. Kudos to Laurence Roth for hearing the call of memory. Bookstores are where our minds feel grounded and our hearts find meaning.” —Ilan Stavans, coeditor of How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish

“A brilliant family memoir and history of American bookselling. Attractively written and always compelling, this provides both an intimate, child’s-eye view of the world and a profound understanding of the nature of cultural transformation.” —Bryan Cheyette, author of The Ghetto: A Very Short Introduction

“This beautifully rendered work brings readers into the lush spaces of a beloved Jewish bookstore in midcentury Los Angeles. Moving gracefully between memoir and a larger story about the world of Jewish books, bookstores, and American Jewish readers, Roth unpacks his father's bookstore. In so doing he rearranges the books to tell his own story.” —Laura Levitt, author of The Objects that Remain

“Roth ushers us into the history of Jewish books in a way no other literary scholar could. This remarkable book gives us an insider’s tour while offering an intimate, moving portrait of one American Jewish family as well as a sharp, detailed, and thought-provoking account of how books move through and transform our lives.”

—Josh Lambert, author of The Literary Mafia: Jews, Publishing, and Postwar American Literature