<p>Feature article on Mawcawber Books and the crisis for independent booksellers. I think this story is of interest to many of us because of the changing cultural landscape of Nassau Street and the Princeton experience.</p>
<p>"Micawber opened in 1981, when Princeton was an old-money kind of place, with independently owned shops lining Nassau Street, adjacent to the picturesque Princeton University campus. "When we first came, every store on this street was a 15-, 20-year entrenched old-family business," Mr. Fox said.</p>
<p>Today that same thoroughfare is dominated by chain stores like Ann Taylor and Foot Locker. Micawber Books, with its purple walls and its alien name, which comes from Dickens? novel David Copperfield, is the one that sticks out now.</p>
<p>Half the store is devoted to secondhand books and other vintage publications, like a stack of Archie comics on the register. The other half is new books, a well-edited mix that includes fiction, history, children?s books and the occasional concession to popular taste, like Rachael Ray's Express Lane Meals. (There are also stalwarts, evidenced by the back wall of shelves lined with Penguin Classics.)</p>
<p>Mr. Fox is proudly from the old school of bookselling. He says he has only been inside a Barnes & Noble store three times. ("I can't do it," he said, grimacing.)" </p>