Every December Steve Gargani, a pressroom manager for printing giant R. R. Donnelley, would look forward to the day a supervisor would visit employees with paychecks and the company holiday gift. The present was always the same—a beautifully printed and bound book, highlighting an individual experience in American history. Known as the Lakeside Classics, those company gift books have become one of the longest running book series in American publishing history. And, needless to say, the books have become highly collectible. “I worked for Donnelley for eighteen years,” said Gargani, which means he had amassed eighteen volumes of Lakeside Classics before leaving the company. Yet the books only whetted his appetite for more. Gargani continued to search for and buy the books, and now he buys and sells the series, as well as other Donnelley-published books, from his Illinois-based online store, lakesideclassicbooks.com.
The Lakeside Classics series, however, began long before Gargani joined R. R. Donnelley.
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