A reader from the Friendly Giant To Our North: “Dear Mr. Derbyshire—To

answer your question: Yes, there are some. There’s at least myself, and I’m

Canadian, no less. I can sympathize with the writer of letter you posted –

the retail bookstore world is so profoundly, blindly leftist (and likewise

assume that everyone else must be too) that they often don’t even notice it.

You would not believe the trouble I’ve had trying to order in any

conservative books; the best I’ve been able to do is reorder sold-out David

Frum, and then only because the manager recognized him as a newspaper

columnist. Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rich Lowry – all turned

down, because our head office buyer in Toronto thinks they’re “icky.” She

favours ordering crateloads of Michael Moore (which, unfortunately, sell)

and Noam Chomsky and Al Franken (which, thankfully, don’t). Her token

centre-right titles are Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations, Bernard

Lewis’ several works on Islam and Shake Hands With the Devil (possibly not well-known in the American market; a local favourite, possibly because Gen. Dallaire

often stops by to sign copies). I tend to be gently humoured; often, my

order suggestions are rebuffed at the store level, so as not to frighten the

buyer too much. Imagine if she knew there was someone in the store who

noticed and resented her remarkable selection bias? Heavens!”

I must say that, joking aside, I think this is pretty awful. As a

book-lover & lifelong patron of bookstores, I am depressed & mildly outraged

to learn that this noble business (Samuel Johnson’s father was a bookseller)

has fallen into the hands of puritanical lefties.

Perhaps the world of conservative thought & authorship owes more than we

know to Amazon.com. Reading emails like the above, I wouldn’t care if they

put the physical bookstores out of business altogether. And I never thought

I’d hear myself say THAT.