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Why Borders Failed While Barnes & Noble Survived

Yuki Noguchi

Yuki Noguchi

borders books

Borders Group Inc., the nation's second-largest bookstore chain, announced that it will liquidate the company. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption

It appears to be all over for the Borders bookselling chain. The company will be liquidated — meaning sold off in pieces — and almost 11,000 employees will lose their jobs. The chain's 400 remaining stores will close their doors by the end of September.

The retailer's first bookstore opened in Ann Arbor, Mich., 40 years ago. Along with competitor Barnes & Noble, Borders pioneered the book megastore business. But Borders made some critical missteps over the years that cost it the business.

The vast tracts of retail space that Borders will soon vacate speak to a gargantuan business that essentially killed itself. At one time, size was its advantage. Borders built a reputation on offering a huge variety of books — tens of thousands of titles in a single store — at a time when most bookstores could afford to stock a fraction of that.

Borders also had an early technical advantage: a superior inventory system that could optimize, and even predict, what consumers across the nation would buy.

But in the mid-1990s, Borders lost its edge.

"It made a pretty big bet in merchandising. [Borders] went heavy into CD music sales and DVD, just as the industry was going digital. And at that same time, Barnes & Noble was pulling back," says Peter Wahlstrom, who tracks Barnes & Noble for the investment research firm Morningstar.

He says Barnes & Noble also invested in beefing up its online sales. Eventually, it also developed its own e-reader, the Nook.

Borders did not. Instead, it expanded its physical plant, refurbished its stores and outsourced its online sales operation to Amazon.

"In our view, that was more like handing the keys over to a direct competitor," Wahlstrom says.

Indeed, outside a Borders bookstore in Arlington, Va., shoppers say they rarely buy books the old-fashioned way.

"I'll go to Borders to find a book, and then I'll to go to Amazon to buy it, generally," customer Jennifer Geier says.

With so many people going online to buy books, Borders lost out. The last time it turned a profit was 2006. In February of this year, it filed for bankruptcy protection.

Those who bemoaned the rise of bookselling giants might see irony in Border's demise. With one of the major players gone, there might be some room, once again, for the little guys.

"I think there are a bunch of different niches around that can still be sustained, but I don't think there's a need for the mass-book seller to be as prevalent or as apparent as they were five or 10 years ago," Wahlstrom says.

Wahlstrom says Borders is disappearing at a time when, as consumers, readers are more empowered than ever. He says he still reads paper books but also reads on his iPhone, computer or tablet.

"Just as I'm probably device agnostic, I am supplier agnostic. I can go online, I can go to Barnes & Noble, I can go to Apple, or I can go to Google. Or I can borrow it from a friend or I can go to a library," he says.

Dan Raff, a management professor at The Wharton School, argues that smaller-town America will suffer from the loss of a chain bookstore.

"The big-box store was a glorious thing while it lasted. To people in many parts of America, they were a kind of Aladdin's cave," Raff says. At Borders, people could access literary variety, contrary to smaller, independent bookstores.

With Barnes & Noble staking its future on digital technology, Raff says, it's likely the big bookstore will only live on in big cities.

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What Happened To Borders Bookstores?

Borders bookstore

You might remember Borders bookstores. They were all over the country in the early 2000s, selling all kinds of books and even multimedia like CDs and movies. Their stores ranged from small outlets in shopping malls to huge buildings packed full of books. In 2003, according to NPR , there were more than 1,200 of the stores nationwide. But by 2012, the chain had liquidated and closed all of its locations.

Bookstores like Barnes & Noble still hold ground in the bookselling market, and the oldest bookstore in America is still standing after more than 150 years. Clearly, people are still reading, and they're going to bookstores to discover new favorites. Borders, a familiar sight and staple storefront for more than four decades, faced plenty of problems in its final years. But what was the final straw for the bookselling giant? Was it a shift to online sales and e-readers, or something else?

The store didn't have great online sale strategies

When Borders first entered the scene, there wasn't really an online marketplace. It made its name by being a big box store where everyone could find something they wanted, according to NPR . But when the internet came around, customers found other ways to get their reading fix.

Other retailers created websites to help move products along. But Borders opted to go a different route. The store actually opted to use Amazon to sell its online products, according to Time , instead of creating its own online marketplace. Time reports that the decision meant Borders handed over control over its online presence and that the lack of cohesive branding likely hurt the store in the long run.

Borders did have its own website for a while. Surprisingly, it was actually hurting the company, and according to Lit Reactor , that website cost the company $20 million to maintain even before it started working with Amazon. That's not exactly a recipe for success.

E-readers and digital books were more popular

The creation of the internet marketplace led to another trend that hurt Borders' prospects. On top of buying physical books online, readers started to shift to electronic books (via Time ). Over the early 2000s, e-books outpaced the sale of physical books, according to Time.

Other outlets saw the change coming and adapted. Barnes & Noble created its Nook e-reader to compete with Amazon's marketplace, according to Time, but Borders never created its own e-reader. In an online essay about the bookstore's closure, former Borders Director of Merchandise Planning and Analysis Mark Evans in part blamed the slow adaptation to e-books.

"[Borders] also dropped the ball on e-books," Evans wrote. "But by the time this became an issue they were just trying to figure out how to keep the whole house from burning down around them, so I find it more understandable."

Without a place to direct people interested in e-books, Borders missed out on a market that could have brought in more sales.

It invested too much in selling other media

Borders might have started out as just a bookstore, but it didn't stay that way. The stores later shifted to selling DVDs and CDs and opted to heavily focus on that market in the 1990s, according to Time . But ultimately, it wasn't as great a success as business executives might have hoped for. The iPod and other MP3 players came through shortly after the shift, and it drew customers away from the physical media Borders was selling (via Time).

According to Lit Reactor , Borders filled almost half of its retail space with CDs. That left them with a lot of empty or underutilized space later on when CDs fell out of fashion, including warehouse space. According to Evans, it took a lot of resources to fill the empty space and the loss of revenue that came around when CDs fell out of fashion.

Their troubles with real estate strategy

Another issue that pops up during a Borders post-mortem is somewhat  easier to understand. The hypothesis is that Borders went on a commercial retail buying spree and bought up too many storefronts — and simply didn't have enough money to support them. According to Time , a vast majority of its stores were also in close proximity to other booksellers like Barnes & Noble. So on top of the shift to online sales and e-books, there were too many physical bookstores (both other stores in the chain and competitors) around wherever a Borders was operating.

According to NPR , Borders bought up plenty of real estate in the 1990s when the business was doing well. It might have been that they couldn't sustain that level of expense , and eventually it caught up with them. That theory is backed up by former employee Mark Evans , too according to NPR . He says they didn't do as well with relocating stores to better locations, and their storefronts couldn't compete with other stores in the area. The company was also trying to recover from massive debt, according to Time, even before the market crash in 2008.

The workplace atmosphere might have played a part

The issues with online sales and real estate were all pretty visible from the outside. But there's also some commentary on the differences in workplace atmosphere between Borders and other retailers. Barnes & Noble, for example, gave its employees an opportunity to try other things. According to Lit Reactor , some were able to work as baristas or fill other roles in addition to cashier or bookseller duty. And a different seller, Half Price Books, also offered better policies for workers, including paid hour-long lunches, full benefits, and better wages. Those factors probably didn't lead directly to Borders' closure, but they didn't help them, either.

Borders closed its doors for a variety of reasons. Some of those were due to management, while others were the result of a changing market. But the bookselling industry is still going strong. From at least some analyses , Borders' disappearance even allowed independent booksellers to expand and flourish in different parts of the country. But for many, the loss of the traditional big-box storefronts is still a sore subject.

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From Local, to Global, to Gone: On the Rise and Fall of Borders Books

Tom borders reflects on lessons learned in the world of bookselling.

The following essay by Tom Borders is excerpted from Among Friends: An Illustrated Oral  History  of American  Book Publishing & Bookselling in the 20th Century , edited by Buz Teacher and Janet Bukovinsky Teacher (Two Trees Press).

In 1970, Louis Borders was working in a bookstore in Boston while attending M.I.T. He suggested two start-up business ideas to his older brother, Tom, who had taught English in a small college and was on a sabbatical trying to write the Great American Novel. Tom dismissed Louis’s scheme to computerize the Daily Racing Form’s statistics so they could make an easy living playing the horses. Louis suggested their next best opportunity was to open a small used bookshop in Boston.

During the time they were drawing up business plans for the bookstore, a neighbor in Louis’s apartment building on Boylston Street was burglarized in the middle of the night. The brothers decided Boston was too fast for them—they needed a more manageable city for their little enterprise. Louisville, Kentucky, their hometown, was out of the question because they had never seen much of a bookstore there. Both had degrees from the University of Michigan, and loved the smart, hip, intellectual atmosphere of Ann Arbor.

After discussing the enterprise name for many long weeks, they decided to launch “Borders Book Shop” on a very modest scale, quietly and out of the limelight, in Ann Arbor. No employees. Not a corporate venture. Barely a business. They would keep it very simple. Originally, they thought they would both work half-time and have time to read and write, and become intellectuals.

That same week, Tom and Louis heard about a major estate auction to be held in Boston, with thousands of books as part of the sale. They planned to commit a good part of their capital, up to $3,000, to buy inventory there. At the auction house they spent hours going through the marvelous collection of a man who had been in the Massachusetts Senate in the early 1900s and whose estate had been in litigation for years: hundreds of leather bindings, fine illustrated editions, but best of all a well curated reader’s library.

On auction day, the last items to be sold from the massive estate were the books. The auctioneer apologized because the original intent had been to divide the books into a dozen smaller lots, but since time was so short “we will auction the books in a single lot. Do I have an opening bid of $3,000 dollars?” A dozen people raised their hands including the nonplussed brothers.

Deflated, the Borders’ bookshop fantasy had seemingly vanished. After the auction they met the renowned antiquarian dealer Richard Mills, who had purchased the books for $8,000. A Harvard graduate and World War II Navy submarine vet, he lived in Exeter, New Hampshire. Mills had a photographic memory; he was a true genius and a gentle soul. Somewhat unkempt, he had a bottle of Maalox leaning out of his wrinkled sport coat pocket. Tom asked him if he needed help moving the books, and was hired. Without much further discussion, Richard Mills walked out of the auction house with a small box of rare pamphlets under his arm. The pamphlets were worth the price of the entire lot.

borders books

Tom rented a truck and moved the books to Exeter, lured by the excitement of the antiquarian business. Richard Mills’ house was his warehouse, showroom and office. His kitchen table was his service counter and conference table. One day, Tom picked up a collection of about 100 antique duck decoys, which Mr. Mills sold in the next few days to other dealers. Another day, Mr. Mills sold the antique desk in his living room for $16,000.

Later, an 18th-century house full of antiques and collectables came to market. Tom followed Mr. Mills as he strolled through the house, opening a drawer here and there, looking closely at a map. After about 45 minutes of looking through a dozen rooms of antiques, three appraisers quizzed Mr. Mills about the value of the items in the estate. At one point, talking about a mahogany desk where he had opened a drawer during his stroll, Mr. Mills told the appraisers “that is not an antique but a very nicely done 1950’s fake.” All three wrote that in their notes.

After six weeks, Tom had finished sorting and cataloging the books. He was stunned when Mr. Mills gave the Borders brothers his entire garage full of books—a truck load of very good reading copies. They drove their precious first inventory to Ann Arbor, laughing at their good fortune and babbling about their future plans. That day Mr. Mills helped launch Borders Book Shop. It would have been wonderful if he could have lived long enough to see their bookstore ten years later.

In Ann Arbor, they leased part of the second floor of a retail building at 211 South State Street in the campus commercial district near the University of Michigan’s main quad. The former residence had been converted to commercial use. On the same floor were Suwanee Spring Leather Shop, where Tom bought a pair of handmade sandals, and Herb David’s Guitar Studio. Louis and Tom were shaggy-haired hippies who fit right in to the Ann Arbor scene in the early 1970’s. They built bookcases and display tables in the space for a month. They opened their second floor used bookstore in February, 1971, with the books from Mr. Mills and others that they had accumulated. It was tiny—two small rooms with a half bath. Hot tea was made every morning for the customers. The final floor plan included a service counter with the commode tucked behind it. The store had to close for a while if the commode was needed.

Since few customers came into that second-floor space, the brothers had time to learn and love the antiquarian book business in the coming months. Several collectors found them and the books from Mr. Mills’ garage quickly went to new homes in Ann Arbor. Nevertheless, Rookie Mistake #1: they realized that, with their wives in school, two families could not make a living from such a small, off-the-beaten-track, second-floor retail space. They realized that the store could never be very exciting given the space limitations.

Six months later, Tom and Louis moved to a first-floor location on Williams Street: 800 square feet. The additional space was an improvement, but it wasn’t a good location for retailing. They wanted more. They moved for the third time in two years to a prime location at 316 South State St. where Wahr’s University Bookstore had been located “since 1892.” That building was three times larger with a full basement for storage and overstock and an office on the second floor. Neither Tom nor Louis were morning people, but their first employee, Doris Becker, was and she opened the store most mornings. Doris was motherly and very protective of the boys.

Rookie Mistake #2: they ordered some new books and mixed them with used books on the same shelves. Customers were confused, not knowing if a slightly worn new book was “used,” or if a gently used book was “new.”

Rookie Mistake #3: They finally understood that Ann Arbor was a readers’ town and that antiquarian books were of marginal interest to the local avid readers. All the used books were culled from the shelves. After surviving three moves in two years, Borders Book Shop was in a good location with enough space to make a splash, and selling the kind of books people wanted. Their ambitions were rekindled.

That year, Joe Gable, fresh from Madison, Wisconsin, swaggered into Borders Book Shop. During a stand-up job interview in front of the fiction section Tom asked him “What do you know about books?” Sounding a bit like Marlon Brando, looking straight into Tom’s eyes, Joe said humbly: “I know more about books than anyone in this store.” Tom was momentarily stunned by the hubris of the comment. But he took the insult like a man, and after a few pointed questions, he hired Joe on the spot. In fact, Joe did know more about books than anyone in the store. And he proved it over the next quarter century.

The auto industry and the Michigan economy were tanking badly in one of their periodic nose dives in 1974. Several commercial stores were vacant in the campus area. In that down economy, the Borders brothers were able to secure a very favorable lease for a large prime space at 303 S. State Street where Wagner Men’s Clothing had recently closed—10,000 square feet on two levels with an escalator and a full basement!! All new inventory would be ordered for the new store. In preparation for the move, Tom started organizing a clearance sale of everything in the old space.

Louis was mumbling something about “developing a system”—he took several yellow legal pads and went to the basement. Tom was immersed in running a frantic three-month long clearance sale to generate the cash needed for the move; he tried to get Louis to leave the basement to help on the busy sales floor. Louis refused—he was working on designing a “system” for inventory. Glancing at the legal pad, Tom scoffed at a 6-page list which included RANC, RANP, RANM. Tom admits that he did not understand the scope and importance of the momentous project Louis was undertaking. In the next months, Louis designed what was one of the first and likely the best computer system for a retail bookstore in the country. To get the computer system written, tested and running, computer time was rented at night on an IBM System 3 computer in the portable trailer of a massive auto junk yard, with howling guard dogs. The junk yard’s system kept track of auto parts (mostly still on the cars); the Borders’ system would keep track of books.

The store’s book buyers ordered an ambitious selection of books for the 10,000 square foot store. It was a chaotic time, with a clearance sale to the bones going on in the old store while Rudy Fink and his carpentry crew built and varnished solid hardwood bookshelves in the new space. All the while Louis and his buyers were placing huge orders, and he was frantically trying to get the computer system ready to receive a tsunami of books. Occasionally they needed to phone Rudy to get him out of bed in the mornings to manage his bookcase-making crew. In a panic, they hustled to open the store in November, 1974, a few days before Thanksgiving. Two days later, it snowed eight inches which virtually shut down retailing in Ann Arbor. Cash was very tight and Tom was often on the phone with publishers wanting payment.

borders books

What seemed like a disaster was averted when, during a booming December, their dream came true—they had a vibrant, exciting bookstore. Joe Gable trained and managed a young, smart staff to provide a specific “Borders Brand” of service: never pushy, cool, friendly, casual, bright. Joe’s crew knew their books, the customers quickly came to rely on the staff and everyone enjoyed the interaction.

They were in their fourth location in three years!! When space became available in an adjacent building, the new space was absorbed. Book titles were added to improve every category throughout the store. They created new categories: Women’s Studies, Gay Studies, and Ecology. Every time they improved a book subject area, such as linguistics, sales in all subjects tended to increase: a customer comes in because she heard about an exceptional selection of linguistic books and she buys a science fiction novel as well. Customers were voracious, and most had never seen such a collection of books. The number of titles in the store increased towards 150,000.

Borders was then larger than most bookstores in the country. Though the brothers had not planned a superstore, their original tiny second floor space had grown in size by a factor of 50, and the quality of the store (selection and service) had increased proportionately. Though a well-run, small, quaint bookstore could still find a place, the high-traffic, high-volume Borders Book Shop in Ann Arbor with its vast selection helped redefine what a bookstore could be in the United States. By adding to the store space piecemeal, the brothers had drifted into the “superstore” concept quite by accident. Mathematically, the formula they discovered was astounding (and over simplified): as their bookstore became larger with better selection, it drew from a larger radius, and it became more exciting, and the sales per square foot increased!

Rookie Mistake #4: Louis and Tom realized that operating a full-blown computer system and employing the specialized subject book buyers and programmers required to maintain a built-from-scratch, one-of-a-kind, stand-alone, sophisticated buying system for over 150,000 book titles was not affordable for a single bookstore. So, in 1976 they started a new company called Book Inventory Systems. The Borders brothers helped individuals open their own stores using their own store name in their own cities and supplied them with a central buying and consolidated shipping. With two shipments a week from Book Inventory’s central warehouse in Ann Arbor, those independent stores often became the best bookstore in their market. Within a few years, in addition the Borders Bookshop in Ann Arbor, Book Inventory System had helped locate, design, and supply stores in East Lansing, Kalamazoo, Toledo, Louisville, Lexington, Cincinnati, Nashville, Memphis, Grand Rapids, Cleveland, and Lexington.

The second Borders Book Shop opened in Birmingham, Michigan in 1985. Joe Gable’s brother, Tim, moved from Montana to Michigan to manage the Birmingham store. Tim, like Joe, was a natural in a bookstore. Borders Book Shop in Birmingham was an instantaneous cultural center in that remarkably literary Detroit suburb. The level and sophistication of sales in the store were a tribute to the affluent community and its education level and value systems. Within two years, sales caught up with the 14-year-old Ann Arbor store. Traveling publishers’ sales reps remarked that both Borders stores were certainly among the top 10 bookstores in the country.

In keeping with Ann Arbor’s egalitarian environment, the Borders brothers installed a company-wide profit-sharing system. While modest at first, good years yielded significant additional pay for the young staff at the stores, which also helped create an esprit de corps, and a sense that this team was doing something important and different.

As they developed the inventory control and distribution systems further, their goal was to have all stores on the system be the best bookstore in their respective markets: best in selection and in service. Inspired by a seminar given by Edward Deming, they strove for continuous improvement.

Potential staff in the stores were given a test to assess their literary acumen, to find out if a potential staff member was a “book person” who could help customers and who could contribute to the delicate literary atmosphere. If he didn’t know who Norman Mailer, Frank Lloyd Wright, Julia Child, and Andy Warhol were, should he be working in a bookstore? The staff needed to be well read, communicative, and bright. They needed to offer a high level of service to the customers to compliment the complicated selection of books, without showing too much ego. Often the staff were specialists in certain subjects, such as art, science, literature, or history, allowing them to be more helpful to the customer. Those specialized staffs brought more to the table than typical retail clerks: they were smart, eager to learn and eager to share their knowledge. Furthermore, they helped the buyers improve the selections by adding titles for the system to their assigned subject area. A good bookstore is a glorious business with terrific people.

borders books

Borders Book Shops and its affiliated stores were well stocked and well-staffed, and created a refreshing, almost intellectual atmosphere—like a library but with classical music playing in the background, and with the stimulating excitement of discovering and buying a stack of books. The newer stores had coffee shops, and sold CDs and DVDs as an integral part of a very energetic environment.

Book buyers extraordinaire Phyllis Lambert and Robin Wagner, each ran Book Inventory System as interim president for several years. In 1988, Robert DiRomualdo, an Air Force veteran with a degree from Harvard and a strong marketing background, joined Borders as its first outside CEO. DiRomualdo brought enormous energy to the company, and under his leadership, store openings increased rapidly.

In 1992, after 21 years in the business, the Borders Brothers sold Borders Book Shops and Book Inventory Systems, Inc. At that time, the central buying and distribution system supplied about 20 Borders Book Shops and a dozen affiliated independent stores. They sold the businesses to K-Mart, which owned the Waldenbooks chain of bookstores, most located in enclosed malls. Waldenbooks was an asset on Kmart’s books, but was not sexy or profitable. K-Mart was looking for a way to dress up and bundle the Waldenbooks operation to make it saleable.

Borders Book Shops and Waldenbooks were quickly spun off as a single public company on the New York Stock Exchange as “Borders Group Inc.” (BGP) in 1995, with Goldman Sachs as the lead banker. It is curious and significant that combining 1,000 Waldenbooks with a handful of Borders Book Shops and Book Inventory Systems into a public company would be called “Borders Group, Inc.”

At the time they sold, the company had developed a powerful inventory and distribution system, highly effective in allowing the stores to carry more titles and to replenish them more efficiently than most other stores. The “system” had some early characteristics of artificial intelligence to help the book buyers manage the periodic replenishment of the thousands of titles in inventory.

When it became a public company, Borders Group, Inc. continued to be led by Bob DiRomualdo. The Borders brothers were not on the board and had no further input into the operations of the company. Bob had stimulated and managed much of the growth from 1988 to the time of the sale. He retired in 1998 and a bizarre succession of CEOs took over to head up Borders Group, Inc: Phil Pfeffer (1 year); Greg Josefowicz (7 years); Ray Marshall (1 year); Mike Edwards (1 year), and Bennett LeBow (1 year).

In 2011, nineteen years after the Borders brothers sold the business and sixteen years after becoming a public company, Borders Group Inc. filed for bankruptcy. All of the stores were closed. Thousands of booksellers lost their jobs. It was a very sad day in America when over 1,000 bookstores, each a mini-cultural center, a source of wisdom and good, healthy information and entertainment, shuttered their doors. And the closings felt like a kick in the stomach to the brothers.

There are many theories about what went wrong. But a series of non-Rookie Mistakes occurred: a far too rapid expansion in United States (40+ superstores were opened in 1998 alone, the year DiRomualdo left the company); a confusing international expansion (London, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia) and lack of control of the supply chain; changing leadership too often as each new CEO jerked the fast changing company in a different direction; poor financing machinations; poor real estate decisions; lack of understanding of the delicate nature and required quality of a great bookstore: the company forgot that selling books is not the same as selling sausage or socks.

At its peak, Borders Book Shop was a beautiful exhibition of the great freedoms Americans enjoy, with a broad selection of American publishers’ offerings, without a single government comment. It was also a bold experience in aggressive capitalism mixed with a strong dose of intellectual endeavor to create a unique setting for the American public.

Though gone, Borders Book Shops are still remembered by some. Their absence has left a hole in the fabric of society in many American cities.

__________________________________

borders books

This is one of more than 100 essays by prominent industry figures in Among Friends: An Illustrated Oral  History  of American  Book Publishing & Bookselling in the 20th Century , edited by Buz Teacher and Janet Bukovinsky Teacher (Two Trees Press). Illustrated with vint age  book jackets and period graphics from Publishers Weekly, Among Friends is a deluxe limited edition that pays homage to the creative and entrepreneurial spirit of the  book business during a time of great change in American culture.

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A Decade After Borders Shut Down, Here’s What’s in Its Former Locations

A Decade After Borders Shut Down, Here’s What’s in Its Former Locations

It’s been almost exactly ten years since the last Borders bookstore closed, following the company’s February 2011 bankruptcy. Vacating roughly five hundred locations throughout 2011, the erstwhile king of brick-and-mortar book retailing left behind a massive real-estate footprint, millions in unused gift cards, and a lot of memories. (And did you know “Borders” was the last name of two brothers who founded the chain, and not a reference to expanding the borders of your mind?)

It is hard to overstate, yet already difficult to remember, just how popular and big Borders was. More than Barnes & Noble, its similarly sized competitor, Borders was practically synonymous with bookstores during its height in the 1990s and early 2000s. In its heyday it was one of the finest and most successful examples of the category killer or “ medium-box ” store, a now-struggling retail concept that mixes discounting and large selection with curation and attention to quality.

Borders distinguished itself in a number of ways. Most of its stores boasted a café and comfortable interior, and later free wifi, which made them social, multi-use spaces: light breakfast spots, teen hangouts, places to read a story to the kids. The chain also included an unusual number of two-story locations, and many urban or downtown ones as well. Despite its large footprint and rapid expansion, many of its stores were architecturally unique. In a fascinating and detailed post on the chain’s style , architect Marc Lortie notes, “Some Borders stores featured circular turret towers that would jut out of the corner of the façade, physically embodying some of the idyllic romance and innocence of children’s books.”

Borders curated its selection with some attention to local interests , ameliorating some of the concern over the fate of local, idiosyncratic bookstores. And despite the heat it took as a corporate chain, Borders unquestionably increased the quantity and variety of books available to the average consumer at reasonable prices, combining the discounting of Walmart with the browsing ability of the local library. “The big-box store [for books] was a glorious thing while it lasted,” Wharton School professor Dan Raff told NPR in 2011. “To people in many parts of America, they were a kind of Aladdin’s cave.”

But Borders also did damage to itself. One widely noted misstep was the chain’s emphasis on media sales—CDs and DVDs—even as it was becoming increasingly clear that physical media was a dwindling market. (Although if Borders had eked it out, perhaps they’d be selling vinyl today!) Unlike Barnes & Noble, which rolled out its own e-reader in 2009, Borders showed little interest in e-books. And in an early and deeply symbolic misstep, the company outsourced its e-commerce operations in 2001 —to Amazon. It later took back its own web operations in 2008, too late and behind the e-commerce curve.

There were also concerns that the company had overexpanded, a mistake common to a number of defunct retailers. Many Borders locations, intentionally placed near Barnes & Noble stores, faced stiff competition. Many were oversized as well. In a Twitter thread I started about the chain, one former employee recalled being told by his general manager that Borders offered a “third space”—i.e., neither home nor work —“and how that justified huge square footage, multi-levels, and a café even at stores that (unlike ours) didn’t have high foot traffic.” The things that made Borders a pleasant space to lounge also cut into its profitability.

When it went bankrupt, Borders was so big that its failure stranded over $200 million in unused gift cards , triggering a multi-year legal saga that ended in the Supreme Court declining to involve itself in the issue . Who knew a bookstore would help set a precedent that gift-card holders are basically out of luck when a company goes bankrupt?

B ut along with the memories, the worthless plastic, and a throwback webpage on the Barnes & Noble website welcoming former Borders customers , Borders lives on in the form of its vacated real estate, the afterlife of which is still unfolding. Storefronts in the category-killer segment have proven difficult to fill in recent years—many of the category killers who would otherwise lease them are themselves struggling or defunct , and the spaces tend to be too small for discount department stores and too large for most others. They’re useless to a Walmart or Target, which have fewer competitors than they had even twenty years ago; and they’re too large for things like drugstores, specialty shops, and most small businesses.

For some insight, I asked on Twitter if anybody recalled a local Borders location, and what its status is today. To my surprise, I received nearly 100 responses regarding locations all over the country, representing a considerable share of the chain’s entire portfolio. In addition to those tips, I used Google Maps and its Street View function to look at a number of former Borders sites. The fate of these stores says something about where America’s overbuilt retail is going. Broken down roughly, this is what happened to them.

Of the sizable sample I looked at, only a few have been demolished. About 10 percent have been subdivided into two or more spaces. A small number have become other bookstores—the Books-A-Million chain, for example, took over several Borders locations. A few have become restaurants; the space seems to suit a certain kind of big-scaled eatery . Somewhat larger numbers have become furniture showrooms or medium-sized discount stores like Ross or Home Goods. About 10 percent have become larger clothing or fashion stores, such as H&M, Forever 21, or even Sephora. About 12 percent are currently vacant; some have been other stores in between, such as the now-defunct Pier 1, while a few have been vacant ever since Borders closed. Only about 16 percent are other category killers: everything from Total Wine to Hobby Lobby to Designer Shoe Warehouse.

Perhaps surprisingly, nearly a fifth of the sample I looked at have become small-format or medium-sized supermarkets, from Aldi to Whole Foods to Fresh Market. This may herald a trend towards downsizing in supermarket spaces , which could in turn leave a raft of oversized and vacant former supermarkets to fill.

But even more surprisingly, a little more than a fifth of the former Borders spaces I looked at are no longer retail at all; their uses include studios, gyms, medical clinics or facilities, a daycare, and a coworking space. It’s clear that on the one hand, there are in fact many possibilities for these kinds of retail spaces, but on the other hand, their traditional options are dwindling.

Decades ago, Borders pioneered the new idea of category-specific superstores in the book space, transforming how Americans searched for, bought, and read books. For those who miss the concept, Barnes & Noble remains a surprisingly solid company, likely to hold on for many years to come. But in its own way, Borders remains. First the driver and then the victim of retail innovation, now its old spaces are evolving and giving us a real-time preview of a new era in the American built environment.

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Borders Group History–The Creation of a Bookstore Chain

Brentano's, Walden and Borders - The Beginnings of the Borders Group

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The Borders Group, Inc. was a publicly held bookstore chain that closed its doors in September 2011. After Barnes & Noble, it was the second-largest bricks-and-mortar US bookstore chain, known for the innovation of creating the first superstore. The group included Borders superstores, Waldenbooks, Borders Express and Borders airport stores. Where many booksellers—even other publicly-held bookstore chains—are closely identified with one owner, the Borders Group came together through corporate acquisitions.

Brentano's, Walden, and Borders

The Borders Group owes its history to several separate chains—Borders, Waldenbooks, and Brentano's. Brentano's was the longest-lived of the three bookstore chains that eventually made up the Borders Group. The original Brentano's store was founded in 1853 in New York City, by August Brentano, a newspaperman. The second oldest of the three, Waldenbooks, was founded by Lawrence Hoyt, a rental library entrepreneur. Hoyt opened the first Walden Book Store in 1962 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; he named the bookstore for Henry David Thoreau's "Walden."

Over the years they were in business, Brentano's and Waldenbooks expanded their establishments into multiple-bookstore chains. In 1984, Kmart purchased Waldenbooks; Waldenbooks then purchased Brentano's. Brothers Tom and Louis Borders opened their first bookstore in Ann Arbor in 1971, while they were students at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor continued to be Borders Group's headquarters).

The Borders brothers opened additional stores in Michigan, Atlanta, and Indianapolis, and developed a sophisticated system that enabled them to track bookstore sales and inventory. In addition to using it in their bookstores, they sold their Book Inventory Systems (BIS) to other booksellers, as well. In 1985, they opened their first "superstore," a large-scale bookstore (with a coffee bar) that was to become the prototype of many that came afterward. In 1988, they hired Robert DiRomualdo, a Harvard MBA with retail experience, to help expand the business. Under his leadership, the Borders bookstore chain grew rapidly in the next four years.

Kmart, Then Borders IPO

In 1992, with the bookstore business booming, Kmart purchased Borders and created the Borders-Walden Group. But book profits proved not to be as robust as anticipated and Kmart was having its retail troubles so, in 1995, they divested themselves of the chain of bookstores, spinning off the Borders Group with an initial public offering.

The Borders Group expanded internationally beginning with a store in Singapore 1997, then opening more than 40 stores in Europe, Asia, and Australia/New Zealand and buying a 35-store chain called, appropriately, Books.

Online Bookselling Threatens Borders Business Model

As it became clear that online book retailing, begun by Amazon.com , was rapidly and dramatically changing the bookselling business, Borders created their online presence. But after their initial e-retail efforts resulted in short-term losses for investors, in what was in retrospect a short-sighted move, Borders scrapped its website. Due to less-than-expected profits overall, some of the bookseller's private equity investors agitated about poor decisions and poor management and in 2001 DiRomualdo was replaced as CEO.

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Borders Files for Bankruptcy

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11:39 a.m. | Updated

Borders , the 40-year-old chain that helped define the age of the book superstore, filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, a widely expected move after years of increased competition, declining sales and months of missed payments to its vendors.

Publishers, who have anticipated the bankruptcy filing for months, said they hoped that it would be a chance for the beleaguered bookseller to reinvent itself. But they were also skeptical that the company’s deep-rooted problems could be overcome.

Borders, which began in 1971 as a used-book store in Ann Arbor, Mich., will close some 200 stores and shed much of its staff. The company currently operates more than 650 stores, including about 500 superstores, and employs 19,000 people.

Publishers were told on Tuesday that Borders had secured debtor-in-possession financing and that a meeting to form a creditor committee would most likely occur next week.

The company listed $1.29 billion in debt and $1.27 billion in assets in a filing in United States Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

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“It has become increasingly clear that in light of the environment of curtailed customer spending, our ongoing discussions with publishers and other vendor-related parties, and the company’s lack of liquidity, Borders Group does not have the capital resources it needs to be a viable competitor and which are essential for it to move forward with its business strategy to reposition itself successfully for the long term,” Michael Edwards, the company president, said in a statement .

As of the bankruptcy filing, Borders owed $178.8 million to its vendors, including publishers, and $18.6 million to its landlords, according to another filing.

Borders said that its stores would remain open during the bankruptcy process and that its rewards program would remain in effect. The company said it would continue to honor gift cards and coupons.

At its peak, Borders was seen as the more brainy and cool of the large book chains, holding onto the college-town culture of its roots. In the 1990s, that image began to fade as the chain expanded wildly and helped snuff out many mom-and-pop independent stores.

The company’s troubles can be traced to a series of strategic missteps, executive turnover and a general failure to keep up with an evolving retail climate. Borders was hurt by pressure from Amazon.com , Barnes & Noble and big-box stores like Wal-Mart that began selling large numbers of best sellers.

Borders badly lagged behind Barnes & Noble in establishing a viable online book business, and in 2001, it linked its online store to Amazon, waiting until 2008 to restart its own e-commerce site.

Shake-ups at the top of the Borders corporate structure contributed to an overall sense of instability for the last several years, and publishers said it was difficult for the company to recruit talent to its Ann Arbor headquarters. (Barnes & Noble is based in Manhattan.) When other stores were downsizing or eliminating their music and DVD sections, Borders delayed scaling back its own.

Borders also opened stores overseas, a move that analysts said stretched the company thin.

“They overexpanded,” said Michael Norris, senior analyst with Simba Information, which provides research and advice to publishers. “They just had the mentality of, ‘If we open a new store, the growth will happen.’ ”

As e-reading began to take off, Barnes & Noble created its own signature product, the Nook, to compete against Amazon’s Kindle .

Borders tried a more comprehensive approach, stocking at least six devices in its stores, including the Kobo ($99.99), the Velocity Micro Cruz tablet ($119.99), the Sony Pocket Edition ($129.99) and the Franklin AnyBook, an audio-only reader shaped like a remote control ($59.99).

None of them have gained significant traction with consumers, compared with the more popular Kindle and Nook.

For the last five years, Borders stock has drifted downward, while the number of employees has fallen to 19,000 from 35,000.

Its sales were down more than 12 percent in the third quarter of 2010, when it reported a loss of $74.4 million. It has yet to release holiday sales data. Borders reported a total operating loss of $143.7 million in the first nine months of 2010.

In conversations with publishers last year, top executives at Borders said they were confident the troubled company could reinvent itself, even suggesting that some stores would be outfitted with wine bars to offer a more social atmosphere. The executives also said they believed there was a strong possibility that Borders could eventually merge with Barnes & Noble.

Borders has been in a crisis mode since December, when it stopped paying publishers for books shipped through the holiday season. The company asked publishers to accept i.o.u.’s for missed payments, a proposal that publishers considered but eventually rejected.

One potentially major concern is whether Borders will still receive shipments from publishers. A spokesman for the Ingram Book Group, one of the country’s biggest book distributors, said on Wednesday that the company was no longer shipping books to Borders.

Large publishers already have accepted that they will lose millions on books they shipped to Borders throughout the holidays. Wiley, for instance, has already written off $9 million in debt.

Penguin Putnam is owed $41.1 million, according to the bankruptcy filing. Other publishers owed money include Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Random House , Harper Collins and Macmillan.

Borders said it had secured $505 million in financing from lenders led by GE Capital to keep it operating through the court process.

Last month, GE Capital had offered Borders a $550 million loan commitment, but one that was dependent on the company reaching certain milestones, including securing $125 million in junior debt. That money would have come in large part from convincing publishers to accept interest-bearing i.o.u.’s in lieu of missed payments.

The two biggest equity holders — William A. Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management and the Borders Group chairman and chief executive, financier Bennett S. LeBow — may suffer the most from the bankruptcy filing. Neither Mr. Ackman nor Mr. LeBow has made additional investments in Borders since the company began looking for new financing.

Last year, Mr. Ackman had proposed lending Borders up to $960 million to finance a merger of the company with its larger rival, Barnes & Noble. He still supports a deal, but only if Borders is able to shed enough underperforming stores to return to financial health, a person briefed on the matter told DealBook.

Many retailers, including Amazon.com and independents, stand to benefit from a reduction in Borders stores. And Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest book chain, will be the biggest beneficiary from the widespread closing of Borders stores, said Peter Wahlstrom, a retail analyst with Morningstar Equity Research, who suggested that customers would move their shopping dollars to the next-closest retailer.

It also gives Barnes & Noble the chance to use its position as leverage with publishers and landlords.

“Does it provide an opportunity for Barnes & Noble to go back and fight for lower rates with their real estate owners?” Mr. Wahlstrom said. “Or, No. 2, does it provide a catalyst for Barnes & Noble to go back and get better terms from publishers and distributors?”

What's Next

What Went Wrong at Borders

The book-selling chain, once a retail juggernaut, is possibly facing bankruptcy. How did it get there?

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Let me start with an unequivocal declaration: I hope Borders finds the means to avoid bankruptcy, or worse, liquidation. The immediate consequence of a Borders default on what it owes publishers would be a cash short-fall of millions of dollars. Even the most profitable publishers have limited leeway to deal with months of unpaid bills. The irony is that the surge in e-book sales across many platforms, the popularity of reading devices and tablets, some effective re-tooling at Barnes & Noble and the stronger independents, plus the continuing growth of Amazon actually have improved the overall outlook for the book business—which would take a considerable hit if the country's second-largest book chain goes under. Borders management is scrambling to get new financing and is soliciting publishers to accept bonds instead of payment. Will that strategy work? My guess is that most publishers want Borders to survive, and will find ways to keep it going at least for a while. But the longer term prospects for Borders—with 674 stores (many already scheduled to be closed)—remain, at best, a major challenge.

So what happened to Borders? An early innovator in controlling inventory, there was expert staff at its Ann Arbor headquarters and store managers who believed in the value of book-selling. At its peak, Borders superstores had all the attributes of good book-selling—extensive selections, browsing space, coffee bars, and outreach programs to surrounding communities. In 1998, Borders shares hit an all-time high of $41.75.

To understand Borders' decline, it is worth going back to its origins on State Street in Ann Arbor. The store was founded in the early 1970s by Tom and Louis Borders, University of Michigan graduates who developed an inventory tracking system that, by the standards of the time, was as sophisticated as computers allowed. When I came into publishing in the middle 1980s, I was impressed with the shrewd team of buyers who dealt with publishers' sales representatives and the store staff that made the most of the simple aluminum fixtures where books were displayed. The Borders brothers began licensing their inventory system and began to expand to locations in Michigan and around Philadelphia. I especially remember a night in 1992 at the height of the presidential primary season when a Borders events coordinator filled an auditorium in downtown Philadelphia by featuring political books I was publishing: a model for how a store could become a venue for public engagement and customer loyalty.

The Borders brothers decided not to stay in the book business, and in 1991 sold the small chain and inventory systems to Kmart for $125 million. In retrospect, that was when the trouble began. Kmart already owned Walden mall stores, which were an awkward commercial fit with the Borders culture. Kmart itself was at the start of a downward spiral, and in 1995 Borders was spun off in an IPO. For a time, the newly named Borders Group seemed to be working. Under the leadership of Leonard Riggio, Barnes & Noble was expanding also, and the competition between the chains seemed to create dynamic energy that benefited them both. The losers were the local independents who couldn't keep up with the marketing and promotional resources of these national corporations.

It was also in the mid 1990s that Amazon launched as an online book retailer and Borders made what, in retrospect, was a serious strategic mistake. Instead of beginning to develop its own initiatives on the incipient Internet (which Barnes & Noble did, with limited early impact), Borders went international, building a substantial chain in the United Kingdom and opening stores as far away as Singapore. This global expansion seems to have blurred the focus on Borders' business in the United States. Ultimately, the international strategy failed. Borders also was slower than it should have been in adapting new techniques for marketing. I was startled to find, on a visit to Borders in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2007, that the store still had no Internet access, instead channeling all communications through Ann Arbor. Working with Borders staff in an effort to introduce multi-platform (e-books and downloadable audio) into their planning, I spent hours in conference calls that went nowhere. Borders online sales were an affiliate of Amazon, which seemed pointless, given Amazon's own aggressive growth.

Meanwhile, the mall business was drying up, and Walden eventually all but disappeared. The role of the Ann Arbor-based experts in selection was gradually diminished. A series of expensive marketing roll-outs and loyalty programs never gained necessary traction. Most damaging was the management turnover, especially at high levels. CEOs and other executives flowed through the Ann Arbor offices, cutting staff, rounding up financing from private equity investors, and promising to catch up with the digital age. But Borders always seemed a step behind where they needed to be. Borders stores took on a generic quality as executives and investors lacked the knowledge and patience to address the chains' mounting problems. I'm sure there is more to this story (especially in the financial and real estate areas) than I know, but what really hurt Borders from the perspective of a book person like me was that the chain was no longer in the hands of true book retailers.

Len Riggio, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and the successful independent proprietors, whatever their other business virtues and flaws, really have a deep attachment to books and the people who read them. But when Borders expanded, they brought in executives from supermarkets and department stores (all of whom insisted they were readers), and the result was a shuffle of titles and more downsizing against a backdrop of financial engineering, which only seemed to make matters worse. Ultimately, a successful bookstore, on any scale, depends on a specific understanding of how to make the most of the outpouring of books and the digital transformation that will attract readers. Whatever else Borders does in the months ahead, it needs to recover its belief that real book-selling is an art (with all the peculiarities that entails), as well as a viable business.

Borders Closes the Book as Decisions Come Back to Haunt Chain

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On Thursday, representatives of the Borders bookstore chain were in court with a plan to liquidate its remaining 399 locations as early as Friday. Jeffrey Brown discusses what's next for bookstores, the publishing industry and bookworms with Slate's Annie Lowrey.

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Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Next, the last chapter for one of the country's biggest bookstore chains.

For Borders, it is, yes, the end of the story. In February, the book chain filed for bankruptcy, hoping to reorganize and stay in business. But, today, its representatives were in court with a plan to liquidate its remaining 399 stores beginning as early as tomorrow. More than 10,000 employees will lose their jobs as a result.

Getting the news today, it is upsetting. We tried. We tried. We gave it our best.

And customers will lose one more place to peruse new books.

I mean, I used to have this Sunday routine where I would go every Sunday and look at all the authors and then have a coffee and maybe read some magazines. And I won't have that little routine anymore.

From humble beginnings — the first Borders, a used bookstore, opened in Ann Arbor, Mich., in 1971 — the company became a pioneer of the big-box bookseller concept.

At its peak in 2003, Borders had more than 1,200 stores around the country, each with thousands of new titles. The company says a host of factors led to its demise, including the turbulent economy, the move away from brick-and-mortar stores to online retailers, and the rise of e-readers, like Amazon's Kindle, Apple's iPad, and the Nook of rival Barnes & Noble.

And more on this story now from Annie Lowrey, who's followed it as a business writer for the online magazine Slate.

Welcome to you.

ANNIE LOWREY, Slate.com:

Now, part of this is, of course, about larger trends of the Internet's impact on the book business. But Borders also made its own mistakes, I guess, along the way, right?

ANNIE LOWREY:

Absolutely.

What happened?

It's not an easy climate for any retail business. It's not an easy climate for anybody who is selling books, obviously.

But Borders made some strategic mistakes. First and foremost, they had a very, very tenuous relationship with the Internet. They actually outsourced the sale of a lot of their books online from 2001 to 2008 to Amazon. And on top of that, they were very slow to come around to e-readers.

That, combined with some other strategic mistakes, having too many stores, having those stores be too expensive, ended up really hurting their business.

All right, so take that apart a little bit, first the online sales.

Now, that's clearly where a lot of the business has gone, right, in the book business?

Yes, absolutely. It's increasingly migrated on to the Web.

And so what you had was these big-box stores which they always sold themselves as a place that you could come and find any book. All of a sudden, when you could go to Amazon or any of a dozen sites and get a much bigger selection of books, you didn't need those big-box stores as much, and so they became places where you could go, you could sit, you could sip and — sit and have a cup of coffee.

But Borders also made some strategic mistakes there. They lost a Starbucks contract to Barnes & Noble, for instance, and the company just ended up being mismanaged.

But people do go to those — to the real stores to look at the real books, but increasingly then they leave and order online.

Exactly. Exactly. It's very, very hard to compete unless you are offering a very boutique experience.

And Barnes & Noble has done pretty well to take advantage of e-readers and e-books and also to make sure that its stores are places that people want to go and congregate.

Now, talk a little bit more about the e-readers. You mentioned Barnes & Noble with the Nook, of course, Amazon with the Kindle. This was an area where Borders fell way behind.

So the Nook is not as big as the Kindle, but it sells really quite well. And more so, every time that somebody buys a Nook, Barnes & Noble not only benefits from selling the Nook, but also then gets to sell e-books to that reader, so they develop a relationship over time. That reader comes back to them. And so it generates a lot of repeat business for Barnes & Noble. And that really helps them.

Where are we in the e-reader and physical book situation? Now, the e-readers have grown and grown and grown. But is there any sense of reaching an equilibrium as to the number of books that will still be sold?

Well, I don't think that you will ever see the physical book die out as a form. I think that 50 years from now, physical books will still exist and I think people will still be buying them in bookstores.

But you're going to see this migration towards e-readers and e-books, especially since there is a lot of competition in the market. Prices are going to come down. And so for consumers, it is going to make more and more sense. If you have an e-reader and you can get a book within — any book, almost, in seconds, basically, you know, in your lap, yes, that's pretty powerful. And that's a good thing for consumers.

But what do you see — well, for those who — except for those who want to go to their bookstore, right?

Sure. That's true.

And their corner bookstore is now gone.

They have fewer and fewer choices in that sense, it is true.

Now, what about the actual bookstores that are left? Particularly — you talked a little bit about Barnes & Noble, still — struggling, but still going, right?

Sure. It's absolutely still going.

And there are other national chains that are still doing well. Books-A-Million is doing well, for instance. And it seems like it might actually pick up some of Borders' pieces. Independent bookstores, it remains a difficult climate for them, but a lot of them have diversified into selling thins like coffee and alcohol and have managed to stay afloat there.

But it is a very competitive market and a very difficult market for booksellers.

And the impact of this, something we have talked about a lot here, but the impact on publishers, on authors of having a major chain like this impacting the whole business?

And I think if you are looking at the broadest trends, what this might do is help hasten the move towards e-books and e-readers. Again, another national chain has fallen apart here, and people going to be increasingly looking to making money and selling books on the Web.

And another thing, the wider economic implications here of a major chain, because Borders, of course, is often found in malls, major malls, right?

So here is a lot of malls around the country losing a kind of flagship store.

A lot of jobs have disappeared this week, more than 10,000. And if you look at some of the other big layoffs that there's been this week, it is more jobs than we made last month, absolutely. And on top of that, you are completely right. Mall vacancy rates are very, very high. For big retailers, again, the climate is just not pretty out there, regardless of what you are selling.

So there is a commercial real estate aspect to all of this.

Yes. They will be unhappy about all this.

OK, Annie Lowrey, of Slate magazine, thank you very much.

Thanks so much for having me.

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Borders books to close, along with 10,700 jobs

July 18, 2011 / 10:13 PM EDT / AP

NEW YORK - There will be no storybook ending for Borders. The 40-year-old book seller could start liquidating its 399 remaining stores as early as Friday.

The Ann Arbor, Michigan-based chain, which helped pioneer the big-box bookseller concept, is seeking court approval to liquidate after it failed to receive any bids that would keep it in business. The move adds Borders to the list of retailers that have failed to adapt to changing consumers' shopping habits and survive the economic downturn, including Circuit City Stores Inc., Blockbuster and Linens 'N Things.

On Thursday, Borders is expected to ask the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York at a scheduled hearing to allow it to be sold to liquidators led by Hilco Merchant Resources and Gordon Brothers Group. If the judge approves the move, liquidation sales could start as soon as Friday; the company could go out of business by the end of September.

Borders' attempt to stay in business unraveled quickly last week, after a $215 million "white knight" bid by private-equity firm Najafi Cos. dissolved under objections from creditors and lenders. They argued the chain would be worth more if it liquidated immediately.

"We were all working hard toward a different outcome, but the headwinds we have been facing for quite some time, including the rapidly changing book industry, e-reader revolution, and turbulent economy, have brought us to where we are now," said Borders Group President Mike Edwards in a statement.

Simba Information senior trade analyst Michael Norris said a Borders liquidation could have far-reaching effects, putting thousands of people out of work at a time of high unemployment, particularly in Michigan where Borders is based. The chain, which has been shrinking in recent years, currently has 10,700 employees.

Norris predicts the closing also could cause sales of electronic books to fall. Borders, for one, entered the electronic book market with Canada's Kobo Inc. last year. Owners of the Kobo e-reader will still be able use Kobo software to buy and read books. And Kobo officials said users of Borders e-book accounts, which began transitioning to Kobo in June, will be able to access their e-books uninterrupted.

"Bookstore employees don't just sell books, they sell the activity of reading, and this decision throws thousands of them out of work," he said. "This industry is going to slowly figure out that a lot of e-book readers still use bookstores all the time to discover what's new before heading home to buy it for their e-reading device."

The loss of Borders stores will also deal a blow to U.S. shopping malls, according to real estate sources.

Borders' move to close 228 stores while it reorganized in bankruptcy protection already increased the collective vacancy rate of shopping centers that contained a Borders to 9.3 percent from 4.2 percent, estimated Chris Macke, senior real estate strategist at CoStar Group, the nation's largest provider of real estate data. Macke calculated the liquidation of the rest of the chain could increase the vacancy rate on that same basis to 18.8 percent. Borders stores average about 25,000 square feet (2,322 square meters), about half the size of a football field.

But perhaps the biggest impact of Borders going out of business will be to the consumer. Asia Lyons, 32, was at a loss Monday when she learned she would have to find somewhere new to shop for books. The New Yorker, a manager at Starbucks, buys 50 to 100 books a year for her and her daughter and usually buys them at the Borders near Penn Station.

"I like to see the book in front of me and know what I'm getting," she said. "I don't even know where another book store is around here."

It has been a long fall for Borders since Tom and Louis Borders opened their first store in 1971, selling used books in Ann Arbor. At its start, the brothers were mostly interested in offering other bookstores a system they developed for managing inventory.

But in 1973, the store moved to a larger location and shifted its focus to selling new books and expanding, helping pioneer the big-box bookstore concept along with Barnes & Noble Inc. At the time, Waldenbooks and B. Dalton mall chains, with small stores and 20,000 to 50,000 titles, were growing rapidly. The new superstores, by contrast, offered between 100,000 and 200,000 titles, as well as enticements to linger like comfortable chairs and attractive lighting.

Kmart Corp. saw the potential and acquired Borders in 1992, forming a book unit with Waldenbooks. It then spun the bookstores off as a separate company in 1995, the same year Amazon started selling books online.

Borders was slow to adapt to the changing industry and lost book, music and video sales to the Internet and other competition. Sales began to fall, leading to a revolving door of CEOs. By the time Borders' current CEO, financier Bennett LeBow, came aboard in May 2010 after investing $25 million in the company, bankruptcy was already looking like a strong possibility.

Borders filed for bankruptcy protection in February after being hurt by tough competition from online booksellers and discounters. It hoped to successfully emerge from bankruptcy protection by the fall as a smaller and more profitable company, but pressure from creditors and lenders eventually led the chain to put itself up for sale and finally, seek approval to liquidate.

At its peak, in 2003, Borders operated 1,249 Borders and Waldenbooks, but by the time it filed for bankruptcy protection in February that had fallen to 642 stores and 19,500 employees. Since then, Borders has shuttered more stores and laid off thousands.

Borders says it expects to be able to pay vendors for all expenses incurred during the bankruptcy cases.

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A Chronicle of Current Events

For human rights & freedom of expression in the ussr, the podrabinek case, dec 1977 to feb 1978 (48.7).

<<No 48 : 14 March 1978>>

On 1 December 1977, the brothers Alexander and Kirill PODRABINEK (CCE 47) and their father Pinkhos Abramovich PODRABINEK were summoned for a chat by Yu.S. Belov, chief of a department at the Moscow City and Regional KGB. Alexander refused to appear.

“On behalf of the Committee for State Security ” (Belov told Kirill and his father Pinkhos Podrabinek)

“I suggest that you and your families leave the Soviet Union and go abroad via Israel within 20 days. There is enough material against you, Kirill Pinkhosovich, to institute criminal proceedings. You, Pinkhos Abramovich, are also known to us for your anti-social activities. An act of humanity is being offered to you both. I advise you to make use of it.”

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Alexander (b. 1953) and Kirill Podrabinek (b. 1952)

The same evening Alexander Podrabinek was arrested on the street and taken to the KGB. Belov presented him, too, with an ultimatum: all three must leave the country, otherwise criminal proceedings would be instituted against both brothers.

Belov let it be understood that the absence of an invitation and difficulties with money would not be obstacles. Belov stressed that they could only leave all together.

HOSTAGE-TAKING

Many painful disputes have sprung up around the moral problems arising from KGB’s ultimatums and blackmail. The Chronicle cannot present the arguments but at least it can accurately convey the stance of participants in such events by reproducing all their statements in sufficient detail.

On 6 December 1977, there was a press conference at Andrei Sakharov ’s flat. Pinkhos PODRABINEK read out a “Statement for the Belgrade Conference [note 1] and the Press”:

“A distinctive feature of this case is the KGB’s use of the hostage system. Not one of us can determine his own fate independently, and a decision about the fate of three people has been placed by the KGB on Alexander Podrabinek alone, in whose departure the authorities are most of all interested. “We categorically refuse to accept such conditions and insist on our right to make our choices independently…”

Then Alexander PODRABINEK read out his “Reply” to the KGB’s proposal:

“I would like to draw the attention of the world public to my brother’s painful position and to the dirty tactics of the KGB — tactics of intimidation and terror. The whole world condemns the hijacking of aeroplanes and the taking of passengers as hostages, yet the KGB is using the very same method with regard to my brother, a method commonly used by terrorists. In the situation that has arisen the most painful thing for me is my brother’s fate. “At the KGB they insistently advised me to take advantage of this ‘humane act of the Soviet government’, as they expressed it. I regard this proposal as unconcealed blackmail by the KGB. “They have given me four days to reflect. On 5 December I have to give my reply. A reply that means a great deal to me. “This is my reply.

“I do not wish to go to prison. I value even the semblance of freedom which I possess now. I know that I would be able to live freely in the West and at last receive a real education. I know that there I would not have four agents at my heels, threatening to beat me up or push me under a train.

“Over there, I know, they will not put me in a concentration camp or a psychiatric hospital for attempting to defend people who are denied their rights and oppressed. Over there, I know, one breathes easily. While here one does so with difficulty, and they stop your mouth and stifle you if you speak too loudly. I know that our country is unhappy and doomed to suffering.

“And that is why I am staying.

“I do not want to go to prison, but neither do I fear a camp. I value my own freedom as I value my brother’s, but I am not bargaining for it. I will not give in to any blackmail.

“A clear conscience is dearer to me than material well-being. I was born in Russia. This is my country, and I must remain here, however hard it may be and however easy in the West. As far as I am able, I will go on defending those whose rights are being so brazenly trampled on in our country.

“That is my reply. I am staying.”

After this Alexander Podrabinek added that he would agree to leave the country only if Kirill were to ask him to do so.

On 7 December 1977, Kirill PODRABINEK made a statement:

KGB Blackmail

1. The KGB is using the hostage-taking method. They are basically blackmailing my brother Alexander, while I am the hostage. 2. The very formulation of the question: ‘leave or we will put you in prison’, is contrary to the law. If a man has committed a crime he must be prosecuted. However, in this case the KGB does not want to stage a new political trial but prefers to dispatch us abroad. The KGB has employed a well-calculated device — to exploit the insolubility of a situation with a hostage. All this blackmail is patently a consequence of the public stand taken by our family … “If any one of the three of us is arrested and any charge whatsoever brought against him, it can only be viewed as an act of revenge by the KGB and not as a requirement of justice.”

On 12 December 1977, Kirill Podrabinek informed Belov that he had decided to leave. Belov replied that Kirill could hand in his emigration documents, and on the same day Kirill did so. On 14 December Kirill Podrabinek made an addition to his previous statement:

“On 12 December, I telephoned investigator Belov at the KGB. Permission to go abroad has been granted; there was no mention of my only being able to leave only with my brother. Does this mean that the KGB has given up its hostage-taking and will really allow me to leave? In the very near future this will become clear … In view of all the circumstances, and fearing for my life” (see CCE 47) “I have taken the decision to leave.” *

KIRILL PODRABINEK (b. 1952)

On 27 December 1977, the police in Elektrostal (Moscow Region) brought charges against Kirill Podrabinek under Article 215 (RSFSR Criminal Code: “Illegal possession of arms, ammunition” etc). Kirill refused to sign the record of this charge. Investigator Radygin obtained his written undertaking not to leave town but said he would not need Kirill before the middle of January and, if need be, he could go to Moscow.

When Kirill Podrabinek came out of the Elektrostal police station he was met at the door by KGB Investigator Belov, who had arrived from Moscow. The condition of Kirill’s departure remained unchanged, Belov said, and gave him three days in which to persuade his brother to agree to leave.

From that day onwards, KGB employees began trailing Kirill Podrabinek . (His brother Alexander had been under a similar “escort” since 10 October 1977, see below). The same day 22 Muscovites issued a statement:

“Wishing to force Alexander Podrabinek to leave the country, the KGB is openly blackmailing him with his brother’s fate. A method of hostage-taking used thus far only by irresponsible criminal-terrorists is in the present case being adopted as a weapon by the official representatives of a powerful State. This blackmail clearly demonstrates the value of the charges brought against Kirill Podrabinek. “We call upon our fellow countrymen and world public opinion to protest against the use of hostage-taking, unprecedented in the practice of civilized states. We call upon our fellow countrymen and world public opinion to follow attentively the fate of the Podrabinek family.”

On 28 December Kirill Podrabinek made a statement:

State Terrorism

“… The KGB has resorted to hostage-taking. My brother Alexander has made a statement for the press saying that he does not wish to leave, but he will leave if I so demand. “Under no circumstances will I make this demand of Alexander. In the first place, that would mean becoming a blind instrument of blackmail in the hands of the KGB, exploiting a situation created by them for my own sake. In the second place, it is impossible for me to even ask, let alone demand such a thing. “However, I have resolved to pursue my chosen line of action and try to obtain permission to leave.”

On the evening of 29 December 1977, Kirill Podrabinek was arrested.

On the day of his arrest, he declared a hunger strike. After a few days he was transferred from Elektrostal to Moscow, to the MVD’s detention centre on Matrosskaya Tishina Street.

The first response to Kirill’s arrest was “The Christmas ‘Feat’ of the KGB”, a short article by Victor Nekipelov [note 2]:

“… The arrest of Kirill Podrabinek is an act of deliberate, demonstrative revenge. The authorities know full well that they are thereby dealing the severest blow to both Alexander Podrabinek – Take that for not accepting our offer! – and to his father — While you didn’t steer your sons to a compromise!”

On 1 January 1978, Yevgeny Nikolayev (see “In the Psychiatric Hospitals”, CCE 48.12 ) sent a letter to the RSFSR Procurator’s Office, protesting against the arrest of Kirill Podrabinek.

On 4 January 1978, Alexander and Pinkhos Podrabinek asked Belov for a meeting with Kirill.

Belov refused but promised to pass Kirill a note from them, “if there are no objections on the part of the investigator”. In the note Alexander and his father asked Kirill: “Do you agree to leave if there is no need to ask Alexander to do the same?”

On the same day, at 11.30 pm, Belov came to Elektrostal to see Pinkhos Podrabinek . He informed him that the investigator “had not allowed” the note to be passed to Kirill. If Alexander handed in his application to emigrate within three days, however, all three could leave the USSR. Otherwise, Alexander  would also be arrested. Belov suggested that P.A. Podrabinek go at once to Moscow and persuade Alexander to change his mind: he even gave Pinkhos Abramovich a lift back to Moscow in his car.

On 5 January 1978, Alexander Podrabinek appealed in an open letter to Amnesty International, calling on the organisation to speak out in Kirill’s defence.

On 9 January Alexander Podrabinek telephoned Belov at the KGB. When Belov asked if he intended to leave, Alexander replied that he could only decide this matter together with his brother.

On 15 January 1978, the Christian Committee for the Defence of Believers’ Rights in the USSR called upon “world public opinion” to speak out in defence of Kirill Podrabinek and condemn the policy of hostage-taking.

At the beginning of February 1978, the Podrabineks were summoned to Elektrostal for interrogation in connection with Kirill’s case.

Pinkhos Podrabinek replied to questions about Kirill but refused to sign a record of the interrogation. Alexander declined to answer questions, stating that the case was inspired by the KGB and was being conducted with violations of norms laid down in the Code of Criminal Procedure.

ALEXANDER PODRABINEK (b. 1953)

From 10 October 1977, Alexander Podrabinek was under constant KGB surveillance. Round the clock he was pursued by two cars carrying seven or eight employees of the security services.

Whenever he was inside a building the cars stood in front of the doorway. Whenever he walked along the street or travelled in public transport there were always several agents at his side. They threatened Alexander’s acquaintances and took photographs of them. Sometimes they interfered more actively with the life of their charge: on Sunday 18 December the escort prohibited Alexander from going skiing with friends in the Orekhovo-Borisovo district [Moscow Region]. Podrabinek wrote about this incident to [KGB chairman] Andropov:

“… Since 10 October of this year I have been under the continuous and unconcealed observation of our glorious Chekists. Defending the State’s security, I understand, it is essential for the KGB to search my home, call me as a witness in the case of Yury Orlov, suggest that I leave the USSR, blackmail me, make an attempt on my brother’s life, and do much else to ensure that I do not, accidentally, undermine the foundations of the Soviet political and social system. All this I understand. “I am not even particularly annoyed when one of the eight officers who perpetually watch over me swears he will break my legs or push me under a train. I understand the full difficulty of this highly complex, responsible and dangerous work and do not get angry with these heroic young people who, performing their civic duty, freeze on cold December nights outside the entrance to my house or squeeze after me onto a city bus in the rush-hour. I am enraptured by their daring, their persistence and their indifference to the cold … “Citizen Andropov! On behalf of myself and six of my friends I beg you: Provide your employees with skis and toboggans and, please, teach them how to use them, if they do not know. Then I shall be able to enjoy my on Sundays and the KGB will be able to work normally and not violate the Soviet Constitution. This can only enhance the reputation of our valiant organs and promote their physical development.”

From January 1978, the constant “escort” was replaced from time to time by ‘ordinary’ shadowing.

The security services are trying by any means to prevent Alexander Podrabinek from continuing his activities on the Working Commission (to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes). In particular, they are hampering him from meeting, in the flats of his Moscow friends, people who have been subjected to “psychiatric persecution” and their relatives. Podrabinek and his friend Dmitry Leontyev , in whose flat he was living, were fined for violating the city residence regulations. Podrabinek was forbidden to continue residing at the flat.

Alexander Podrabinek was warned that he was liable to be charged with “parasitism”. In February 1978, having given his shadow the slip, he managed to get a job as a medical orderly (he is a qualified paramedic).

The pre-trial investigation of Kirill Podrabinek ’s case was completed in February 1978.

=======================

[1] Representatives of all 35 member-States of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) assembed in the Yugoslav capital Belgrade to discuss the implementation of the 1975 Helsinki Accords five years on.

[2] Victor Nekipelov

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A Greek Refugee Camp Went Up in Flames. The Aftermath Was Even Worse.

A devastating 2020 fire on the island of Lesbos is the springboard for a meditation on origin stories, borders and migration in Lauren Markham’s “A Map of Future Ruins.”

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In this dramatic photograph, a line of people, some wearing masks, carrying children or pushing carts of belongings, flee a fire raging in the background under a dark, smoky sky.

By Jennifer Szalai

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A MAP OF FUTURE RUINS: On Borders and Belonging , by Lauren Markham

More than three years after the fact, we still know too little about what happened in the migrant camp known as Moria, on the Greek island of Lesbos, on Sept. 8, 2020. That night, a fire started in Moria’s Zone 6, one of the makeshift areas abutting the main camp’s walls. Flames tore through the tents, the embers carried by the wind, leaving most of Moria’s 11,000 residents homeless .

Nearly everything else about the fire is contested. Within a few days, Greek authorities arrested six young Afghans, convicting them in two rushed trials over the next nine months. In one trial, the judges deliberated for less than 10 minutes before handing down guilty verdicts; in the other, the government’s sole eyewitness, whose account was already riddled with holes, didn’t even show up.

Because of Covid restrictions at the time, Lauren Markham says, these were months when she had to “follow the case from afar.” She had visited Moria in 2019, an experience she describes in “A Map of Future Ruins,” her ruminative new book about borders and identity. In 2021, she returned to Greece, where officials “repeatedly refused to provide evidence or facts on the case,” stonewalling her reporting efforts. (The defendants’ appeal, originally scheduled for last year, is now expected to take place in March.) She concludes that the six defendants “hadn’t set the fires — there was simply no proof.”

The Moria fire turns out to be only one part of the story she wants to tell. Markham is the author of “The Far Away Brothers” (2017) , a powerful, superbly narrated account of Salvadoran twins who arrived in the United States as teenagers, fleeing the violence of their home country. “A Map of Future Ruins” is at once more ambitious and more diffuse, braiding together scenes from contemporary Greece with the history of Markham’s own family’s emigration from Greece a century ago, along with a detour to an ice hotel in the borderlands between Russia and Norway and a short chapter on what humans can learn from trees.

“Ultimately the Moria story would end up not only connected to but central within my larger inquiry into the mechanics of belonging, exclusion and whiteness in a heavily bordered world, the inquiry that had brought me to Greece in the first place — and central to the book that I would eventually write, this very book you hold in your hands, so different from how I first imagined it,” Markham explains early on. It’s an unwieldy sentence that conveys the hazards of such an expansive approach. When she describes what she sees, her observations are vivid; when she starts musing, the prose gets windy. Where her previous book was animated by an unflinching specificity, “A Map of Future Ruins” sometimes meanders so far afield that it loses its bearings.

Greece is an undeniably rich subject, both as a location and as a metaphor. As the vaunted “birthplace of democracy,” the country, with its storied past, has become the stuff of nostalgia, its iconography the stuff of veneration. Nazis and white supremacists have offered warped versions of ancient Greece to assert Western superiority. Yet as Markham suggests, the nation’s current troubles make all the mythologizing seem even more desperate and bizarre.

“Greece, with its rampant corruption, widespread poverty and increasingly autocratic leanings, now defied its own origin story,” she writes. Markham is attuned to reversals, to paradoxes and discrepancies in meaning. The more globalized the world becomes, the more ardently “so many of us yearn for a root system to tether us.” Yet so much of what she encounters is “absurd”: the flamingos (“bright pink absurdities on this dry island in Greece”); the proposal for a floating wall on the surface of the Aegean Sea (“something from an absurdist novel”); her own reaction when someone says she looks Greek (“that, absurdly, delighted me”).

And then there is her seemingly fraught relationship to her own book. “It would be absurd and inhumane, I knew, to attempt any comparison between my own family’s story and that of today’s refugees,” she writes, and she (wisely) doesn’t attempt anything of the sort. Yet her book does include bits from her family’s story, and it does include sections on today’s refugees. She presents her refusal to draw connections as a matter of principle, declaring at several points her growing frustration with journalism, “an industry of extraction,” and the “logic of sequence” that governs linear storytelling.

So she offers a series of set pieces, a number of them vignettes from her travels in Greece — the place she yearns to know and identify with, even as it seems to bewilder her at every turn. She sees a woman talking to a duck and meets a man who says he knows how to “speak bird.” Her husband gets bitten by a donkey, and shortly after they spot a couple of writhing snakes on the ground. “The bewitched donkey, these twirling snakes, felt like missives to decode,” she writes, “but here I was again, grasping at meaning.”

Getting lost is a theme. So, too, is the nostalgia propelled by other kinds of loss. Markham frequently quotes Svetlana Boym, the artist and scholar whose 2001 book, “The Future of Nostalgia,” is an explicit inspiration. Yet where Boym’s meditations were girded by her brilliant and original argument about different ways of longing for a past that may have never existed, Markham gets lost in her lostness. “A Map of Future Ruins” is a collage that never quite coalesces. Even the Moria fire, which she calls “central” to her inquiry, doesn’t provide much by way of guidance.

“Whoever set the fire — if indeed it had been deliberately set — must have been attempting to disrupt some perceived order of things, that is, to revise the story.” That claim is plausible. But it’s a sweeping sentiment so laden with qualification that it leaves you like Markham on her travels: grasping at meaning with no sense of where to go.

A MAP OF FUTURE RUINS : On Borders and Belonging | By Lauren Markham | Riverhead | 259 pp. | $28

Jennifer Szalai is the nonfiction book critic for The Times. More about Jennifer Szalai

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Book review: The dramatic story behind a court decision, told 50 years after it transformed tribal and fisheries law

“Treaty Justice: The Northwest Tribes, the Boldt Decision, and the Recognition of Fishing Rights”

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By Charles Wilkinson; University of Washington Press, 2024; 296 pages; $34.95.

On the 50th anniversary of the Boldt Decision, legal historian Charles Wilkinson has revisited the historic case that affirmed tribal sovereignty and fishing rights in Washington state. While that landmark decision was limited to fishery management in Washington, its influence regarding Native sovereignty and equitable allotments of resources swept well beyond those borders and continues to influence American, including Alaskan, society.

Put simply, in 1974 federal judge George Boldt, after a voluminous court proceeding, ruled that government promises to secure the fisheries (principally salmon) for Northwest tribes were central to the treaty-making process in the mid-1880s and that tribes held original rights to the fish. He further determined that the treaty language meant that tribes had a right to 50% of the fish and should participate in collaborative management. His ruling was upheld by both the Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Nothing, however, was simple about the history involved, the decision-making, or the ramifications of such a transformative ruling.

Wilkinson, who worked as a staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund in the 1970s, today teaches law at the University of Colorado and has written 14 previous books, mostly related to Native American issues. He never worked on the case that led to the Boldt Decision but followed it closely from the start. “Treaty Justice” is his exceptionally well-researched and clearly written account of the subject, from early Northwest Indian practices and the encroachment of settlers to the present day. If his bias in favor of tribal rights is demonstrated by his title and obvious approval of Boldt’s ruling, he’s also thorough in factually presenting and documenting every aspect of the story.

Early sections of the book go back to the origins of the Northwest’s Salmon People and their connections to the land, water and especially the fish on which they depended not only for food but for identity, trade, spirituality and cultural groundings. As America expanded westward, “The matter of tribal land possession was no minor or theoretical matter,” Wilkinson writes. An 1823 court decision had established that while the United States had obtained land title to all the West against foreign nations, tribes retained the right of occupancy. Settlers could not move onto tribal land without formal treaty approval.

Lengthy and revealing passages describe rushed treaty talks in 1854-55, in which Isaac Stevens, a military man appointed by President Pierce as governor of the new Washington Territory, set out to open up as much land as possible for homesteading. The “negotiations” with tribes were entirely one-sided, with hand-chosen tribal “leaders” being presented with documents to sign. As they ceded their ownership to vast regions and agreed to live on reservations, the one thing the tribes insisted on was that they be able to continue to use off-reservation lands. Largely, these were rights to fish at their traditional places. If the treaty language was a bit ambiguous in places, the intent and understanding of the tribes, as documented for the court case, were not. Article 3 read, “The right of taking fish, at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations, is further secured to said Indians in common with all citizens of the Territory.”

For some years, there was minimal conflict between tribal members and homesteaders. The homesteaders were intent on farming, not fishing, and tended to purchase their fish from Indians. That changed with the arrival of the salmon canning industry in 1877. Non-Native commercial fishermen quickly filled the waters; as their catches expanded, tribal catches shrunk. Salmon themselves went into sharp decline, not just from overharvesting but as the result of dam building and habitat destruction.

In its management, the Territory and then, after 1889, the State of Washington insisted that all fishermen obey the same laws and regulations regarding seasons and gear. By the early 1960s commercial fishermen were catching 85.5% of the Puget Sound harvest, sports fishermen 8.5%, and tribal fishermen 6%. When tribal members tried to assert their rights, they were arrested, often abused or beaten, and had their gear destroyed or confiscated.

The growing civil rights movement brought attention to minority rights in general, and young attorneys applied themselves to the poorly understood field of Indian law. When a 1969 Oregon case was decided in favor of “a fair share” for tribes and against state police power, the groundwork was laid for the Boldt Decision. For three years evidence was gathered and depositions taken. Everyone involved agreed that the litigation should produce a full record including historical and anthropological evidence. Among the facts established was that dictionaries of the 1850s defined “in common with” to mean “equal.”

The Boldt Decision is acknowledged today as the first big win for the modern tribal sovereignty movement. It was met with open defiance by non-Native fishermen and the state of Washington for the following five years until the U.S. Supreme Court upheld it. Opposition to the ruling, Wilkinson points out, “came to a Washington society that had little concept of the history, law, and constitutionalism that led Judge Boldt to rule as he did.” Many ordinary citizens considered the treaties to be discriminatory and unfair. Boldt, Wilkinson points out with emphasis, ruled not from popular opinion or fear of reprisals but only on legal and constitutional grounds.

By pulling Congress into awareness of fishery disputes, the Boldt Decision led to the passage of the Fisheries Conservation and Management Act of 1976 (now called the Magnuson-Stevens Act) and to successful co-management of resources. Although salmon runs continue to suffer in the Northwest, conservation efforts are undertaken cooperatively, and habitat is restored. The take-down of the Elwha dams (built on Elwha tribal land in 1911 and 1926 and destructive of the river’s salmon) was the first major dam removal in American history and, according to Wilkinson, “a testament to the Lower Elwha Klallam culture, sovereignty, treaty rights, and staying power.”

[ Book review: The Aleutian War, captured in the words of those who served on the islands ]

[ Book review: Propelled by polar exploration, ‘Battle of Ink and Ice’ examines the early 20th century’s media landscape ]

[ Iñupiaq author wins national honors for debut novel celebrating unity and beauty in Indigenous cultures ]

Nancy Lord is a Homer-based writer and former Alaska writer laureate. Her books include "Fishcamp," "Beluga Days," and "Early Warming." Her latest book is "pH: A Novel."

As Trump takes blame for sinking border security deal, Utah GOP Gov. Cox says immigration will cost Biden reelection

“if we don’t see a change from president biden and his administration — i think he’s making a huge mistake — it’s gonna cost him the election,” gov. spencer cox told reporters..

(Laura Seitz | Pool) Gov. Spencer Cox speaks to reporters during the governor's monthly news conference at the Eccles Broadcast Center in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024.

Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox again blamed the President Joe Biden administration for not effectively addressing immigration at the U.S. southern border. His comments come as Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have torpedoed legislation aimed at addressing border security — seemingly at the request of former President Donald Trump.

“If we don’t see a change from President Biden and his administration — I think he’s making a huge mistake — it’s gonna cost him the election,” Cox told reporters at his monthly news conference on Thursday.

Seeking reelection, Trump has encouraged congressional Republicans to avoid agreeing to border security efforts to allegedly use the issue to attack Biden. Last month, Trump told supporters at a campaign event to blame him for sinking a deal on the border in Congress.

Cox said Thursday that the federal government has “absolutely dropped the ball on this.”

After visiting Eagle Pass, Texas in early February, Cox announced that Utah would send five Utah National Guard troops and five Utah Highway Patrol officers to Texas. According to the governor, Utah has sent 230 troops to the border since 2018.

“If the Biden administration is not going to fill their constitutional duty, and if Congress is not going to fulfill their duty, then unfortunately, the states are going to have to step up,” Cox said Thursday.

Utah has been working closely with the Lone Star State, Cox said, and has been told Texas isn’t looking for large numbers of troops at the moment.

“If there is a request for more,” he added, “we will have those conversations.”

Cox said last year’s 3.2 million interactions with undocumented immigrants is not sustainable. According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection data from fiscal 2023, CBP had 3.2 million “encounters” nationwide and 2.4 “encounters” at the “southwest land border.”

“It is overwhelming all of our systems, it is completely unsustainable,” Cox said Thursday. “I don’t care how compassionate you are.”

When asked if he was concerned about the crisis of immigration in Utah, Cox said he was “deeply concerned” and “we don’t have resources.”

Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall has disputed Cox’s claims that illegal immigration is linked to a rise in drug use.

“Our data doesn’t show any increase related to immigration changes at the border,” Mendenhall said at a Feb. 5 news conference.

While Cox agreed with Salt Lake City officials in that large amounts of drugs are being trafficked by U.S. citizens, he disagreed on policy.

“Where I think she’s wrong is that the cartels are deeply involved in both the drug smuggling and smuggling illegal immigrants to the border and across the border,” he said. “So to say that there is no nexus between what’s happening at the border and what’s happening in Utah is just patently false.”

Cox said he wants Congress to fix asylum laws, which “everybody agrees are broken.”

“We’ve made it so impossible for people to do it the right way that people feel they have no choice but to do it the wrong way,” he said.

Last February, Cox wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post with Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, calling for the federal government to let states sponsor immigrants.

“Immigration sponsorship would give states a dynamic means to attract new residents, both from a pool of new applicants from abroad and from the ranks of current asylum seekers,” the governors’ wrote then.

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Book recalls Polish ‘countess’ who saved…

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Book recalls polish ‘countess’ who saved majdanek prisoners.

Janina Mehlberg, seen with her husband Henry Mehlberg, was a Jewish woman who posed as a Polish countess to intervene at Majdanek, the Nazi concentration camp in Lublin, Poland, during the Holocaust. Courtesy of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

(JTA) In December 1941, a petite, elegant woman left her home in Eastern Galicia, where she was known as the Jewish mathematician Janina Spinner Mehlberg.

Three days later, she arrived in Lublin — soon to be an epicenter of Nazi extermination in occupied Poland — with a new identity. She was now Countess Janina Suchodolska, a self-assured Polish aristocrat — and she would soon negotiate the release of thousands of prisoners from the Nazis and save thousands more through deliveries of food and medicine.

Janina Mehlberg, seen with her husband Henry Mehlberg, was a Jewish woman who posed as a Polish countess to intervene at Majdanek, the Nazi concentration camp in Lublin, Poland, during the Holocaust.Courtesy of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Beneath her masquerade as an aristocratic welfare official, Janina concealed that she was an officer in the underground Polish Home Army, where she in turn concealed that she was a Jew. This enigmatic character is the largely unknown heroine of “The Counterfeit Countess,” a new book by historians Elizabeth B. White and Joanna Sliwa.

Janina’s story was nearly lost to history, disclosed in an unpublished memoir that slipped through three pairs of hands before White and Sliwa embarked on corroborating it and researching their book.

After World War II, Janina and her husband Henry Mehlberg immigrated to the United States and settled in Chicago, where she taught mathematics at the Illinois Institute of Technology and he taught philosophy at the University of Chicago. She wrote her memoir shortly before her death in 1969.

Her husband translated the manuscript into English and tried unsuccessfully to publish it. Before his own death in 1979, he entrusted the package to Arthur Funk, a history professor at the University of Florida. Funk also sought in vain to interest publishers and in 1989 gave the manuscript to White, who had a career investigating and prosecuting Nazi criminals with the U.S. Department of Justice before serving as a historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“At that time, survivor memoirs and diaries were not frequently published,” Sliwa told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The focus was on the perpetrators — on understanding how the Holocaust happened — and not on witnesses, because of questions about the reliability of survivor testimony.”

When White received the manuscript, she was a new mother busy at the DOJ, with neither the time nor the Polish language skills to conduct research in Poland. In 2007, Funk became the third custodian of Janina’s account to die without seeing it published.

White was haunted by a sense of responsibility and eventually connected with Sliwa, an expert on the Holocaust in Poland, forming the partnership that finally brought Janina’s story to the light of day.

The authors supplemented Janina’s testimony with wartime documents and statements from her colleagues and former prisoners at Majdanek, the camp where she worked, along with details about her life that Janina herself did not deem important to record — such as her first 34 years.

Born Pepi Spinner in 1905, she enjoyed a privileged childhood in Żurawno (today’s Zhuravno), a town that was then Polish and is now part of Ukraine. Her father was a wealthy estate owner who socialized with Polish nobles; their children were her friends. The family experienced little overt antisemitism and Janina absorbed the Polish patriotism of her class. Along with Polish and French, she spoke German, English and Russian.

Janina’s childhood was abruptly shattered by World War I. Along with other Jewish landowners, her father was abducted by Russian forces and died in 1918. A wave of pogroms swept through Central and Eastern Europe after the war, killing as many as 100,000 Jews.

Still, Janina thrived as a star mathematics student at Jan Kazimierz University in Lwów (now Lviv). Despite the closed doors to both women and Jews in academia, she studied with the leading philosopher Kazimierz Twardowski and obtained a doctorate in philosophy. In 1933, she married another ambitious Jewish student of Twardowski, Henry Mehlberg.

The couple enjoyed a comfortable existence as Polish intellectuals, with him teaching philosophy in Lwów and her teaching math at a girls’ high school. But the global war soon encroached on their quiet lives. In 1939, the Soviet occupation brought hunger, totalitarianism and a war on intellectuals. Then German forces took Lwów in 1941.

With the help of Ukrainian nationalists, the Nazis immediately carried out mass shootings of Jews and prominent Polish professors, including many non-Jews who were friends of Janina and Henry. Trucks full of Jews drove daily to a hill above the city, where they were shot and buried in mass graves. Then Lwów’s Jews were ordered to move into a ghetto, which Janina and Henry knew to be a death sentence. They fled with the help of Janina’s family friend, Count Andrzej Skrzyński, who promised to procure them false papers, jobs and a place to live in Lublin.

Transformed into Count Piotr Suchodolski, Henry got an agricultural job that allowed him to keep a low profile. But Janina — now Countess Suchodolska — was not content to evade death narrowly. Instead, White and Sliwa said that she followed one mathematical principle: “The value of one life is less than the value of multiple lives, and her life, if she survived without seeking to save others, would have no value.”

Janina joined the Polish Main Welfare Council (known by its Polish initials RGO), the only Polish civil society organization allowed to operate under the Nazi government. While working undercover for the Polish resistance, Janina walked into Majdanek several days a week to meet with mass murderers and argue that saving a certain number of Polish lives would serve their interests.

“The Counterfeit Countess” details how Janina’s mathematical mind gave her insight into Nazi Germany’s calculations of life and death. She took advantage of a shift in the war, when the Nazis realized they would not conquer the Soviet Union as quickly as they had hoped. By February 1943, Russian forces had crushed the Germans at Stalingrad and Allied bombs were incinerating German cities.

“They needed to have foreign workers replace all the German men who had to go to the front,” said White. “Heinrich Himmler wanted to develop his concentration camps as reservoirs of forced labor, and he ordered thousands of Poles be sent to the camps — especially Majdanek and Auschwitz.”

The concentration camps were not designed for productive labor, but for mass death: Many of the prisoners who were not immediately murdered died from starvation, exhaustion or disease. But if Himmler’s underlings wanted to profit the Reich, they needed more prisoners who actually survived to continue working — ideally through an organization that fed them without SS spending.

Janina used this bargaining chip to deliver increasing amounts of food and clothes to Polish inmates of Majdanek. When typhus raged through the camp, defying quarantines and even spreading to German soldiers, she negotiated the provision of medicines. On top of her authorized deliveries, she smuggled more food and messages from the Polish resistance.

She also pushed for the release of Polish inmates who were rated unfit to work, such as the sick, orphaned children and disabled detainees, to the care of the RGO. In total, White and Sliwa documented that Janina negotiated the release of at least 9,707 Poles, including 4,431 from Majdanek.

The RGO could solely aid those considered racially Polish by the Germans — so Janina’s efforts could not be directed toward her fellow Jews. And no mathematical gymnastics could help her against the killing machine meant for her people. Within Nazi race ideology, Jews were the most dangerous of Germany’s “subhuman” enemies and had to disappear from the “Lebensraum” (“living space”) Hitler intended to conquer for the German people. A minority of ethnic Poles, who ranked slightly higher on the subhuman scale, would be allowed to survive as laborers for their German masters.

That meant that even within the Polish Home Army, Janina had to keep her Jewish identity secret. Members of the underground ranged from friends of Jews, such as Count Skrzyński, to right-wing nationalists who wanted no Jews in their ranks.

Her efforts to help Jews were solitary and confined to the margins of her bureaucratic labor. She knew that Jews lived together with Poles at Majdanek and that each compound’s kitchen fed prisoners from the same cauldrons. As she strove to deliver more and more food into the camp, she held onto hope that it would enrich soup fed to all the prisoners, staving off starvation for thousands of Jews alongside Poles.

But on one visit to Majdanek in May 1943, she smelled the burning flesh of the last Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, who were sent to be gassed by the thousands after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. She also saw 30,000 Lublin Jews deported to the Bełżec death camp in 1942 — a crucial component of Operation Reinhard, Germany’s Final Solution to murder all the Jews in Poland.

One and a half million Jews were murdered at the killing centers of Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka as part of Operation Reinhard. Janina was one of the first Poles to learn how the operation ended, with 42,000 Jews shot at Majdanek, Trawniki and Poniatowa on Nov. 3 and 4, 1943. It was the largest German mass shooting of the Holocaust, code-named Operation Harvest Festival by the Nazis.

In her memoir, Janina never described how she, a Jew in disguise, was affected by witnessing the slaughter of Jews. That might be because she intended her book for a Polish audience in the 1960s, when antisemitic narratives about the Holocaust were prevalent in the Soviet Union, said White and Sliwa.

She also considered herself, according to her own accounts, as much a Pole as she was a Jew. She and Henry were not religious, although they would partake in secular Jewish communal activities in Toronto and Chicago after the war.

Notwithstanding the Nazi-imposed racial hierarchy, many Polish Jews did not feel they had to choose between two identities in the 1930s. Only a minority of Jewish women in the resistance were religious, according to Judy Batalion, who researched Jewish women in Poland’s resistance for her 2021 book, “The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos.”

“They were fully Polish. Many of these women had a lot of questions about their position in Polish society in the Second Republic but they were Polish,” said Batalion, using a term for the Polish state during the interwar period.

Though she was never religious, Janina ended her memoir with a gesture toward both her Jewish faith as Janina Mehlberg and her Christian one as the Countess Suchodolska. In this final chapter, excerpted at the end of “The Counterfeit Countess,” she described taking a tour of Majdanek with a Swedish delegation after it was liberated. The ever-pragmatic mathematician, who lived by the principle of maximizing the number of lives saved, then considered all of the people for whom such calculations were no solace.

“I thought of those who had been broken, physically and morally, who had betrayed other lives in the hope of saving their own,” she said. “However we risked our necks, it was of our own will. But they were in bondage, and all human pride was beaten out of them. They didn’t ask to be martyrs. Most of them no doubt wanted nothing more than to live out their days in an average, humdrum existence, without great impact and without glory.”

For those souls, Janina turned momentarily from mathematics to prayer, perhaps finding her sorrow too great for the world of the living.

“There is nothing left to do for them but to remember,” she wrote. “And in the way of my ancestors, intone ‘Yisgadal, v’yiskadash,’ the Kaddish for the dead, and like the real Countess Suchodolska, ‘Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison,’” its Christian equivalent.

To read more content visit www.jta.org

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Can India Replace Ravichandran Ashwin With Another Player? What Does The Rule Book Say?

Ravichandran ashwin pulled of the squad for the third test against england, currently being played in rajkot, due to a family emergency..

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India all-rounder Ravichandran Ashwin pulled of the squad for the third Test against England, currently being played in Rajkot, due to a family emergency. The latest development came hours after Ashwin took his 500th Test wicket, only the second Indian to do so after the legendary Anil Kumble . While the BCCI initially did not provide the reason behind Ashwin's decision, the board's Vice-President Rajeev Shukla revealed that the player's mother was facing the medical emergency. "Wishing speedy recovery of mother of @ashwinravi99 . He has to rush and leave Rajkot test to Chennai to be with his mother," he posted on X (formerly Twitter).

Wishing speedy recovery of mother of @ashwinravi99 . He has to rush and leave Rajkot test to Chennai to be with his mother . @BCCI — Rajeev Shukla (@ShuklaRajiv) February 16, 2024

BCCI provided an update on the development.

"Ravichandran Ashwin has withdrawn from the Test squad, effective immediately due to a family medical emergency. In these challenging times, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the team fully supports Ashwin," BCCI said in a media release.

The Indian Cricket Board did not reveal the exact reason for Ashwin's withdrawal and requested all to respect the cricketer's privacy.

"The BCCI extends its heartfelt support to the champion cricketer and his family. The health and well-being of the players and their loved ones are of utmost importance. The Board requests respect for the privacy of Ashwin and his family as they navigate through this challenging time," the statement added further.

Can India replace Ashwin with another player?

Ashwin's absence now leaves Team India with 10 outfield players and only four full-time bowlers. 

As per the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) , the guardian of the Laws of the game, umpires can allow a substitute fielder if they are satisfied that a player has been injured or become ill during the contest.

A team can also have a substitute fielder for a 'wholly acceptable reason' according to MCC's rule No. 24.1.1.2.

I had spoken to an umpire before posting. He has now rechecked and confirmed that this can now only be allowed between the toss and start of play. So, deleting earlier tweets since they are rendered irrelevant. https://t.co/8gFKfwbyWT — Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) February 17, 2024

Since Ashwin is neither ill or injured, India will only be allowed to have a substitute fielder in Rajkot with the consent of England captain Ben Stokes .

The substitute fielder will not be allowed to bat or bowl for the remainder of the match. Only concussion substitutes are allowed to bat or bowl.

Meanwhile, Ashwin became the fastest Indian to pick 500 Test wickets, surpassing former India captain Kumble in the elite list. Overall, he is the second fastest after Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan .

Meanwhile, Devdutt Padikkal walked on as a substitute fielder for Ashwin, but cannot bat or bowl, with England on 207-2.

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Newsweek

Strange Glow Over Moscow Skies Triggers Panic as Explosions Reported

B right flashes lit up the night sky in southern Moscow in the early hours of Thursday morning, new footage appears to show, following reports of an explosion at an electrical substation on the outskirts of the city.

Video snippets circulating on Russian-language Telegram channels show a series of flashes on the horizon of a cloudy night sky, momentarily turning the sky a number of different colors. In a clip shared by Russian outlet MSK1.ru, smoke can be seen rising from a building during the flashes lighting up the scene.

Newsweek was unable to independently verify the details of the video clips, including when and where it was filmed. The Russian Ministry of Emergency situations has been contacted via email.

Several Russian Telegram accounts said early on Thursday that residents of southern Moscow reported an explosion and a fire breaking out at an electrical substation in the Leninsky district, southeast of central Moscow.

Local authorities in the Leninsky district told Russian outlet RBC that the explosion had happened in the village of Molokovo. "All vital facilities are operating as normal," Leninsky district officials told the outlet.

The incident at the substation in Molokovo took place just before 2 a.m. local time, MSK1.ru reported.

Messages published by the ASTRA Telegram account, run by independent Russian journalists, appear to show residents close to the substation panicking as they question the bright flashes in the sky. One local resident describes seeing the bright light before losing access to electricity, with another calling the incident a "nightmare."

More than 10 villages and towns in the southeast of Moscow lost access to electricity, the ASTRA Telegram account also reported. The town of Lytkarino to the southeast of Moscow, lost electricity, wrote the eastern European-based independent outlet, Meduza.

Outages were reported in the southern Domodedovo area of the city, according to another Russian outlet, as well as power failures in western Moscow. Electricity was then restored to the areas, the Strana.ua outlet reported.

The cause of the reported explosion is not known. A Telegram account aggregating news for the Lytkarino area described the incident as "an ordinary accident at a substation."

The MSK1.ru outlet quoted a local resident who speculated that a drone may have been responsible for the explosion, but no other Russian source reported this as a possible cause.

Ukraine has repeatedly targeted Moscow with long-range aerial drones in recent months, including a dramatic wave of strikes in late May.

On Sunday, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the region's air defense systems had intercepted an aerial drone over the city of Elektrostal, to the east of Moscow. No damage or casualties were reported, he said.

The previous day, Russian air defenses detected and shot down another drone flying over the Bogorodsky district, northeast of central Moscow, Sobyanin said.

There is currently no evidence that an aerial drone was responsible for the reported overnight explosion at the electrical substation in southern Moscow.

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Stills from footage circulating on Telegram early on Thursday morning. Bright flashes lit up the night sky in southern Moscow, new footage appears to show, following reports of an explosion at an electrical substation on the outskirts of the city.

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