Politics and Prose Bookstore

This guide to Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C. opens with a human chain of staff and customers hand-carrying the entire store across Connecticut Avenue in 1989, a move NPR's Susan Stamberg narrated live on air. It follows founders Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade from a cramped storefront to a growing building that absorbed the struggling Cheshire Cat children's bookstore in 1999, and the basement coffeehouse that opened in 1993. A policeman stood in the middle of Connecticut Avenue that day, stopping traffic so the chain of books could keep moving.