2012

Shopping

Category
Books
Winner
The Coop
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With independent bookstores (and even national chains) falling by the digital wayside, it’s all the more impressive that this classic soldiers on. The four-story Harvard Square behemoth peddles both bestsellers and literary classics, as well as arcane treatises on history, philosophy, music, and science — precisely what you’d expect from a store founded by Crimson scholars in 1882.

The Coop | 1400 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA | 617-499-2000 | http://www.thecoop.com

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  • http://aaronweber.wordpress.com Aaron Weber

    You know that the Harvard Coop bookstore is actually just run by Barnes & Noble, right? It’s not at all an independent. It’s impressive that it continues to exist as a physical building, I suppose, but it’s hardly a co-operative. Like the endlessly multiplying banks that dot Harvard Square, The Harvard Coop bookstore is just another one of those generic megamarts you’ve seen in every other strip-mall everywhere. I’m sorry you got taken in by it, but it’s not independent, it’s not a co-op, and it’s not at all the place “founded by Crimson Scholars in 1882.” They licensed the name and outsourced it years ago.