A2: Borders

Writing in the Detroit Free Press, columnist Mitch Albom recalls his first visit to a Borders bookstore, and reflects on what the decline of that business says about the industry. “I still remember walking into the original Borders bookstore in Ann Arbor. It seemed to take up the entire block. ‘You gotta see this place!’ a friend had gushed, and when we pulled open the doors, I knew what he meant. A symphony exploded in my head. This was 1985, a little more than a decade after Tom and Louis Borders, two brothers who were students at the University of Michigan, slapped together a used book operation on the second floor of a building.” [Source]