the people. Knowledgeable book people are being lost from book culture."

Are we witnessing the extinction of that culture?

"Here's how it used to be," recalls Steve Bercu, founder of the Austin, Texas, shop BookPeople. "Across the street from the University [of Texas], they had about 15 bookstoresall of them relatively small, all niche stores." And now? "Everybody's gone. One hundred percent of them. There's not a single bookshop on that street now."

The reason, he says, boils down to one word: Chains.

Bercu should know: In 2002, he led a neighborhood coalition to accomplish the rare feat of beating back a Borders superstore looking to open across the street from BookPeople. While the effect of online bookselling has been diffuse and of questionable profitability, when a bricks-and-mortar chain fires up itsespresso machines and Norah Jones CDs nearby, it's often the death knell for an indie. So when asked if the proposed placement of that Borders was a coincidence, Bercu laughs.

"No," he responds quickly. "It was not. They open these stores down the block from the established local bookstores. That's a knockout blow."

But it's only the latest round in a very long fight. Before Borders and Barnes & Noble, the bête noire of bookshops was the department store. When Macy's opened its first book department in 1869, local bookstores found themselves besieged by the original big-box retailing: deep discounts, clueless clerks, and a fearlessly déclassé combination of non-book "notions" and bestsellers that left snobs sputtering . . . but delighted the masses.

"Within a decade," Miller's study notes, "Macy's was