This Baltimore bookstore encourages 'shoplifting' — and the reason why is actually kind of beautiful

This one's for all the book lovers out there — in Baltimore, a small warehouse with no cash register and no clerks became one of the city's most important gathering places. Founded by Russell Wattenberg, The Book Thing operated on a simple, radical idea: anyone could walk in, take as many books as they wanted, and walk out with no questions asked, and no money exchanged. When CBS Sunday Morning visited the site years ago, they found people lining up outside with buckets, baskets, and boxes, ready to load up on books without any limit or cost. As Wattenberg joked, "We encourage shoplifters."

'The Book Thing' ran entirely on donations and volunteers, and it existed solely to make books accessible to anyone who wanted them. Teachers from schools often hauled away hundreds at a time to stock their classrooms. According to PBS, it all began in 1995, when Wattenberg was passing through Baltimore on a trip from New York to Florida. After a few days of unexpected work opportunities, he stayed longer. Working as a bartender, he met many local schoolteachers who complained about the lack of books in their classrooms. Wattenberg, a longtime book collector, began offering them free books from the back of his van.

Word spread quickly, and people started donating books for him to hand out, and soon, Wattenberg left his van unlocked so teachers could grab what they needed. After years of running operations out of rented garages, he bought a warehouse in 2005. From the outside, it looked like an auto repair shop, but inside were thousands of books stacked on shelves, sorted loosely by genre, but not alphabetized, leaving visitors to dig for hidden treasures. Wattenberg worked over 100 hours a week at 'The Book Thing,' personally sorting through tens of thousands of donated books, but paying himself only $13,500 a year. 

Sometimes he found more than he expected: birth certificates, passports, love letters, and even, once, a live snake tucked among the donations. For Baltimore teachers, 'The Book Thing' became a crucial resource, and one of them was Sinclair Clunas. In the late '90s, when her school had no art textbooks, she turned to the warehouse to fill her shelves. By 2016, 'The Book Thing' was beloved by book lovers across the region, until it was gone. A fire destroyed the entire warehouse, including more than 200,000 books. At first, Wattenberg thought it would be the end, but the people of Baltimore rallied almost immediately with cash donations, fundraisers, and thousands of new books.

Within months, 'The Book Thing' was rebuilt with new shelving, insulation, a working heater, and a handicap-accessible bathroom. Wattenberg, who had never planned to make Baltimore his home, said he was overwhelmed by the support. "The community came out in just huge numbers," he said. When it reopened, 'The Book Thing' remained true to its original mission with no cash register or checkout lines, just books waiting for anyone who wanted to take them home. Wattenberg now plans to continue for as long as he can, with a simple idea: "If a book is sitting in a box, it’s not doing anybody any good. It’s not a book, it’s a stack of paper."