If you pick the right topic-

Can you really run a one-topic bookstore?

Chartwell was the name of Churchill’s country house in Kent, and in 1983 it became the name of Barry Singer’s midtown bookstore. A 22-year-old music journalist at the time, Singer stumbled into the job. Chance had it that Richard Fisher, scion of one of Manhattan’s richest real estate families, dreamed of opening a bookstore in his new building. So when Fisher met the young Rolling Stone writer, he asked the kid what kind of bookstore he’d build if given free rein. “I described a fantasy of an English library,” Singer recalls, “an oasis away from the world, hand-carved oak bookshelves.” Fisher asked him to put together a five-year plan, and, next thing you know, they were in business. Fisher would put down the money; Singer would handle everything else. “Build it however you want,” the real estate mogul told the writer, handing over a small room in the lobby hallway of his tower. “But since I love Churchill, would you mind calling it Chartwell?” 

Beyond that, it had nothing to do with the Prime Minister. Chartwell was an independent bookstore like any other. But a seed had been planted. Because of the name, Singer stocked a handful of Churchill titles; and in his introductory newsletter to the building’s tenants—corporate lawyers, consultants, financiers, and Henry Kissinger—he mentioned “two new additions to our Churchill rare books department.” There was no such department, needless to say, but Singer received a call, almost immediately, from the office of Saul Steinberg, a famous corporate raider at the time. “He was kind of the devil incarnate,” Singer recalls. “Movies like Wall Street were about Saul—they really were.” And now his secretary was on the line, calling from way upstairs. “Mr. Steinberg will take those Churchill books from your newsletter,” she said. “And while you’re at it, would you get him leather-bound first editions of everything he ever wrote?” 

Keep in mind: Churchill published 42 books in his lifetime—starting with war journalism from his early years in India and Egypt; and going all the way through to biographies of his illustrious ancestors; to epic multi-volume works like A History of the English Speaking Peoples. “He wrote to pay the bills,” as Singer puts it. “Every time he had something due, he wrote a new book.” He wrote enough to earn a Nobel Prize in literature. So to request everything he wrote in first edition is to place a very expensive order indeed. It’s the kind of order large enough to nudge Singer down a Churchill wormhole, from which both he and his bookstore have yet to emerge...