Tracie Hall

“In 1969, the barely breathing FABA unsuccessfully petitioned the city to add the name Book Row to the Fourth Avenue street signs. Meanwhile, by 1965, there was at least one TV in 94 percent of American homes. Critics blamed televisions, like radios before and many things after, for sapping attention spans. In 1969, Fred Bass anticipated that books would one day become electronic: “You’ll have a telephone with a screen and you’ll be able to dial a book.”
― Evan Friss, The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore