![You're looking at a broken book. It's a first English edition [1827] of The Roman History by GB Niebuhr, volume one. The...](https://img5.globuya.com/406/017/1614009754060176.jpg)
08/21/2026
You're looking at a broken book. It's a first English edition [1827] of The Roman History by GB Niebuhr, volume one. The two-volume set is very scarce, and there's some fold-out material toward the front of volume one that's never been opened.
It wasn't broken thirty minutes ago. A woman (twenties, not from Houston) broke it when she was rifling through my antiquarian books. Front room, if you know the shop. I watched her open it, the front board flipped carelessly, and I heard it too. The free endpaper and preliminary leaves (in the photo) shot loose, and she tore half the hinge.
I watched the whole thing. She immediately said: "I didn't do that," as if a quick denial would render me stupid. Or forgiving or something. I said: "Sure you did. I just watched you do it."
She actually then said: "I feel like I didn't do that!" I said yeah you did, etc. She said: "I'm done with this place!" She and her companion fled.
I suppose I could have...called the police? She's on her way to destroy something in some other shop at this point. The book was worth $750. It will cost about $150 to repair it now. I want to vomit.
It was about a year and a half ago that this started happening. It's weird. For five years walk-in customers were gentle. I'm not sure what has happened. Also this morning an older lady (seventies) read the sign that says "do not fan through books," and she scoffed, started laughing at me. She said "okay" with a weird sarcasm.
So though I don't know what's going on, I do know this isn't sustainable. It's not an age thing, and it's not an age-of-the-book thing. That incident a couple months ago, the one where I was review-bombed, that was a book printed in 1979. But that guy sure broke it.
I seldom give behind-the-scenes looks at operations here. I actually find that unbecoming of a shopkeeper. But I need folks to be careful with my inventory. The point at which I put valuable books behind glass will be the point at which the business fundamentally changes.
And it's all over the shop, every day of the week. A person will try to wedge in a $200 book where it obviously doesn't belong rather than just set it down on the table or something.
I don't know. I'm not ready to call this a failed experiment, but it's close. After all, I'm as upset about the woman laughing off my request not to devalue my inventory as I am about the actual devaluing of my inventory.
Open tomorrow 10:30 until 5:30.
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