Stanford University Press Blog

Q&A with Brad Johnson of East Bay Booksellers

Celebrating academic books and the joys of neighborhood bookstores

Brad Johnson posing in front of an East Bay Booksellers display. Photo by Brad Johnson.

 

Brad Johnson, owner of East Bay Booksellers, graciously answered questions about the life of a local bookstore and EBB's new subscription program, The Syllabus, which introduces readers to academic books from the last ten years. 

 

You recently launched  a new book subscription service called The Syllabus, which is focused around “new-ish” academic books organized around a quarterly theme.  How long has this idea been in the works and why specifically books within the last ten years?

I’ve been wanting to do subscription packages for individual bookseller’s staff recommendations for years, even before I bought the store. The timing just was never quite right. I think, as well, something more focused might be more helpful (both for the customer and the bookseller). This is very much “Brad’s Subscription Service,” with a hope that others on staff might decide to do something else. As for the “last ten years” – that’s just a way for me to limit the range of possibilities for me to choose from. My curiosities are pretty broad, so any help I can get with that is good.

 

Aside from the obvious instructional angle, what aspect of academic books are you most eager to share with readers?

I love academic publishing because it is passion projects feeding into other passion projects. The citations and bibliographies alone show that all deep thinking has an entwined and complex root system. That’s basically all research is, following trails blazed by way of bibliographies and citations. There’s something humbling and grounding to this idea that knowledge comes by cooperating with the knowledge of others.

I want general interest readers to engage in the rigor of knowledge formation and evolution as it is happening, versus simply consuming information that’s already been formed. You see the latter in a lot of commercial nonfiction that’s drawing from academic publishing but not necessarily engaged with it in a creative way. There’s something to be said for this, but I think something like The Syllabus attracts readers who are keen, as it were, to know how to prepare the dish rather than just eat it.

A Soundtrack to an Academic Book?

Education, cadence, and the pitfalls of perception

CHRISTOPHER BONASTIA

Cover of Soundtrack to the Battle by Uno Collision. Co-designed by by Christopher Bonastia and N'taaliyah Banks. Used with permission. The light yellow border & slight cropping was added by the SUP Social Media Specialist.

 

In The Battle Nearer to Home », I assess the politics of school integration in New York City from 1954 to the present. I examine policies and practices of the New York City Board of Education that perpetuated a system in which Black and Latinx children often attended substandard, segregated schools that fundamentally failed them, in a system that nonetheless, retained the glint of integration and inclusion. Crucially, I also spend many pages trying to capture what the long, exhausting, and ongoing quest for racial justice in schools felt like to those who were fighting for it: the determination, the exasperation, the frustration, and the sense of community that comes with waging an uphill struggle. My project Soundtrack to the Battle will, I hope, aid in this effort.

I’ve been making beats since the late 90s, when I transitioned from live deejaying—working until 4 AM didn’t mesh well with the academic life—to music production. The simplest reason for creating Soundtrack to the Battle is that I love making music. I love to write as well. Yet, as anyone who creates in more than one medium can tell you, the joys and struggles of each one are distinct. In many cases, I can create a demo of a song and enjoy it recreationally on my runs or in the car in a matter of days or weeks. I forgive my “mistakes,” which are sometimes the secret sauce in a song. I live and breathe with it. Of course, writing a book entails a more stretched-out timeline and rhythm, and that marathon contributes to the feeling of accomplishment and pride when your book enters the world.

Some of the songs on the soundtrack are instrumental. One listener commented that the album has “driving in the rain vibes.” Another said: “It’s really a city soundtrack.” I love those interpretations: people typically don’t react to academic books in such rich, impressionistic language. While the instrumentals refer abstractly to the emotional landscape of school equity struggles, other songs include interviews with friends who attended New York City public schools. (Those interviews were conducted after the book was complete.)