Profile

As the only used bookstore in a highly literate neighborhood, this shop favors the serious and the scholarly. The area’s resident writers, researchers, and professors frequently donate their old volumes, and so despite dirty floors, bare light fixtures and cramped aisles, this nook has become a destination for readers and collectors low on cash. Serious art books from publishers like the Met or MoMA and scholarly photo tomes are the store’s specialties, though the American and European history sections are just as impressive and pleasantly free of textbooks. (The rolling racks out on the sidewalk are stocked with dollar titles in more crowd-pleasing categories like travel guides, parenting, and golf.) Modern paperbacks and best-selling hardcovers on the New Arrivals shelf go for half the cover price, and, be they best-sellers or not, titles from Brooklyn authors get prime, appreciative placement right next to the cash register. — Ben Perkins