Politics and Prose is a well known independent book store. From its website:
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Another reason to support your local Indie . . . .
The most successful and enduring independent bookstores survive because of their deep and genuine roots in the community. Politics & Prose is no exception. We are continuously thinking of ways to promote reading, thinking, and discourse and to engage more people in our shared cause of good books.
One excellent example has been our Book-a-Month gift program, currently orchestrated by talented booksellers Liz Sher, Kerri Poore and Amy Kane. Liz manages gifts for adults, while Kerri and Amy select the books for children and teens. Each of these two programs has over 100 recipients. The idea was to avail the curatorial expertise of our P&P staff to people from other places. So far, it has been wildly popular for out-of-towners, but also for regular and local customers who simply enjoy the fun of being directed to books they might not otherwise read.
With Book-a-Month, our staff carefully chooses books based on information you provide about your gift recipient’s interests, hobbies, favorite books and writers, and literary genres. Each month, we send a new title to the reader getting your gift. We ship anywhere in the world, so don’t worry if the object of your affection lives in Ouagadougou or Ulan Bator. We ship to APOs and DPOs; we always have a few of them -- right now there's one State Dept. family in Moscow who gets adult and children's books. They said it's a way for them to keep in touch and remember us, and they love it! Our booksellers also will be happy to correspond with the gift recipient to discuss book selections and areas of literary interest.
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I really don't see anything as innovative and hands-on even possible with B&N, much less Amazon.
P & P is famous for hosting book events in which the locals can meet with political leaders and opinion makers from DC. THey also host 18 book clubs that meet there every month. They are not just a bookstore: they are a community hub. Their closing would leave a hole that really can't be filled by Amazon or any online forum.