Bookshops in Jerusalem # 2

In the last posting I talked about the newest English-language Jerusalem bookshop, the Arab-owned Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem. The oldest is the Jewish-owned Ludwig Mayer Bookshop on Jaffa Street (http://www.mayerbooks.com/). Whereas the new Educational Bookshop is bright, open and comes with a cafe, Ludwig Mayer looks not dissimilar to what it probably looked like in 1908 or when it moved to these premises in 1935. It's dusty, dark, has a multi-lingual stock and caters for the academic market. The stock includes the kind of expensive academic books on the Middle East and on Jewish history that you might see in reviews, but rarely in bookshops. Come with your credit card, but without a wheelchair as the shelves crowd in on you. This is the sort of shop to disappear into and come out a few years later, older, greyer, but wiser.

They do mail order, and a quick look at their catalogue included gems such as Hebrew Literature in North Africa Since 1381 and Development of Jewish Book Publishing in Lithuania (in Russian) and The Historical Prologue of the Hittite Vassal Treaties. No, I don't know what they are either.