Here’s what I love about buying the vast majority of the used books I’ve collected over the years from the shelves of the local thift store, Saint Vincent de Paul’s. Each and every day that the weather allows it, I take a walk from the office on East Washington Ave down the Yahara river foot path to Lake Monona, turn south up one of the back streets, usually Spaight or Rutledge, until I get to Baldwin, which I follow back to East Wash to get back to work. Gets me out of the office for about forty minutes to breathe some fresh air and restore my sanity.

St. Vinnie’s just happens to be located at the corner of Baldwin and Williamson street, so I end up stopping there at least once or twice a week. Most of the time I walk out ten minutes later empty-handed, but every once in a while my eye stops on the spine of a book that’s not like any of the other trade paperbacks and I step a little closer to check out the title, author or publisher. Last Thursday I had to squint especially hard to make out the faded gold leaf stamped into the worn binding of a volume titled “Hopkins and Roosevelt.” That could only be Harry Hopkins, one of Franklin Roosevelt’s most trusted and loyal cabinet members, and a man who’d made recurring appearances in the many books about the Great Depression I’ve read in the past two or three years. I’d never run across a book that was principally about him before, but after thumbing through the first few pages I liked it enough to tuck it under my arm and head for the checkout.

When I got home I googled the author, Robert Sherwood, to find out more about him because, I’m ashamed to admit now, his name didn’t ring a bell even though he turned out to be one of the founding members of the Algonquin Round Table, a contributor to Vanity Fair and one of FDR’s speech writers. The book I just happened to pick off the shelf because I was curious to learn more about Harry Hopkins turned out to be a Pulitzer prize-winning for Sherwood. And I took it home on a whim for only a dollar!