"A soft rain begins to fall and we walk on as the street closes in around us, like a bird quieting for the night. And then, there it is: the shop we call the Time Warp Toy Store. Enter and it is 1983. He-Man reigns supreme. Barbie has crimped hair and dangerously sharp shoulder pads. I pick up a puzzle, on the side of the box a stamp reads: Made in

“In the summer of 2008, when I was working as a beleaguered junior editor at a news magazine, I used to distract myself by visiting the Strand Bookstore, near Union Square in Manhattan, and rescuing one yellowing, waterlogged book from the dollar carts outside. There was a bizarre urgency to these missions for me—I kept imagining the fate of the