{"id":6211,"date":"2010-10-12T11:47:40","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T15:47:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=6211"},"modified":"2010-10-12T12:21:00","modified_gmt":"2010-10-12T16:21:00","slug":"carla-cohen-1936%e2%80%932010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/10\/12\/carla-cohen-1936%e2%80%932010\/","title":{"rendered":"Carla Cohen (1936\u20132010)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade in their bookstore Politics and Prose. Photograph by Chris Leaman. <\/p><\/div>\n

Carla Cohen<\/a> died yesterday. For twenty-six years she and her partner, Barbara Meade, ran what was and is the best bookstore in Washington, DC: Politics and Prose<\/a>. They did it by being tireless and intrepid. They opened a caf\u00e9 when that wasn\u2019t an obvious thing for a serious bookstore to do. The caf\u00e9 remains a success. (They also opened a used bookstore, which wasn\u2019t.) They were pioneers of social media avant la lettre (my parents still forward me their newsletters), and they earned the highest respect of publishers\u2014because their customers trusted them and loved them. At the annual booksellers\u2019 convention, Carla was royalty; it was a mark of favor for a young editor to be taken to meet her. Of course, if the young editor had grown up in northwest DC, he already had met her. There was a limit to how bookish you could be there and not know Carla; that limit was not high.<\/p>\n

Carla and Babara turned a profit at a time when most independents folded. They hired and trained an expert staff. They read everything. Most of all, they promoted excellent books. Whoever buys the store\u2014which Barbara and Carla put up for sale this summer\u2014will be buying an outsize piece of Washington\u2019s mental life. No doubt Barbara will choose the best possible successor, yet neither she nor Carla can be replaced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carla Cohen died yesterday. For twenty-six years she and her partner, Barbara Meade, ran what was and is the best bookstore in Washington, DC: Politics and Prose. They did it by being tireless and intrepid. They opened a caf\u00e9 when that wasn\u2019t an obvious thing for a serious bookstore to do. The caf\u00e9 remains a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1061,1060,1059,940],"class_list":["post-6211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-memoriam","tag-barbara-meade","tag-bookstore","tag-carla-cohen","tag-politics-and-prose"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCarla Cohen (1936\u20132010) by Lorin Stein<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"October 12, 2010 \u2013 Carla Cohen died yesterday. 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