The Big-Box Bookstore Dilemma

“A new bookstore such as the latest Barnes & Noble behemoth — 36,000 square feet spread out across two floors — that opened a week and a half ago in the Chicago Loop neatly encapsulates the 21st Century booksellers’ problem: Is it all about the classics — or the cappuccino? And how can an establishment that sells books — each one a rectangular homage to intellectual independence — be cogs in a bland, homogenous corporate machine that has been accused of mashing smaller independent bookstores into goo?”