The Life and Tomes of Michael Powell - Univ of Chicago Magazine Dec 2001
good article, on several counts.
Backstory
early 60s Powell workd in tiny student co-op in Reynolds Club basemt wh bght students' bks on consgnmnt// father Walter ran HydeParkshop one summer, startd own Portland 1971, asked son for help, M moved to OR, turned operation over to co-owner Brad Jonas, X'80.
Powells.com
"The site is known for a certain eclectic approach to books and a slightly wacky feel," says Powell. With features such as author interviews, staff recommendations, and book reviews from Salon.com, Atlantic Online, and the Utne Reader, it was listed in Forbes magazine's Spring 2001 Best of the Web issue. Yahoo's e-shopping guide for 2000 called it the best book site.
There are no discounts, but Powells.com has what Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble don't: a sea of used and out-of-print books. The other two buy books from Powell's to fill their own orders.
All Hat
Michael Powell still re-reads the Horatio Hornblower tales that ignited his imagination as a child in Portland, where he was raised by his Ukrainian father, a schoolteacher and painting contractor, and his schoolteacher mother, who was from a long line of commercial fishermen in Oregon. While in high school and as an undergraduate at the University of Washington, Powell spent his summers fishing on the Columbia River with his grandfather, earning spending money by catching salmon, steelhead, and sturgeon.
These days when he wants to get close to nature, he heads for the high desert of eastern Oregon where he and his wife have a vacation home they call the All Hat Ranch. (Their 22-year-old daughter, Emily, lives in San Francisco.) The ranch's name refers to an expression of disdain Texans have for weekend ranchers, people who are "all hat and no cattle." I like that.
Unionization
-recalls how Carla felt about it at P&P 1997 -ended differently- did not unionize -majority did not vote for it.
Powell admits that he almost became more than a weekend rancher after his 500-plus staff voted by a narrow margin to join the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. The three-year contract they demanded was signed in August 2000 after ten months of sometimes bitter negotiations. The reserved, even shy bookseller, whose wages and benefits were generous by industry standards, was hurt that he was demonized in the process, depicted as a rapacious bully, with some employees picketing and parading a life-sized puppet of the boss around the store.
"One of the things Oregonians pride themselves on is a certain civility of conduct, a certain commitment to honest interaction," says Powell. "What I hated was the contentiousness of it, I hated the personal vilification that's involved in the process." Believing that his staff didn't need the kind of support and protection that unions offer, Powell argued that he bent over backwards to provide extra benefits and high wages.
Now, he says, he has moved past the battle though the memories are still painful."My greatest fear was that I would become so disenchanted with the business that I wouldn't want to be involved any longer. I thought that would be a tragedy of a high order for myself because it's been my life."