This engaging book by one of France’s leading contemporary philosophers celebrates the particular communication of thoughts that takes place by means of the business of writing, producing, and selling books. Nancy’s reflection is born out of his relation to the bookstore, in the first place his neighborhood one, but beyond that any such “perfumery, rotisserie, patisserie,” as he calls them, dispensaries “of scents and flavors through which something like a fragrance or bouquet of the book is divined, presumed, sensed.”

On the Commerce of Thinking is a brilliant semiology of the cultural practice that begins with the unique character of the writer’s voice and culminates in a customer’s crossing the bookstore threshold, package under arm, on the way home to a comfortable chair. It’s also an understated yet persuasive plea in favor of an endangered species.