"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history."

-- Abraham Lincoln


J & S DeSimone Booksellers was founded in 2005 as an online store and has recently expanded into a brick and mortar shop located in Village Gate Square in Rochester's historic and scenic Neighborhood of the Arts.


We serve the needs of collectors and scholars from the professional historian to the average reader. We have a varied inventory of books -- new, used and rare, limited edition lithographs, maps, photographs, historical autographs, statuary/busts and collectible die cast models.


"A room without books is like a body without a soul"

-- Cicero


  ooks: Investing In History


We are happy to ship our books world-wide, with shipping quotes provided. We are proud to have already sent our books around the world and find it interesting to see what goes where.


We have sent scholarly Civil War battle books to Poland, a Frank Lloyd Wright coffee table book to Italy and a German military book home to Germany. We have also shipped books to Belgium, England, Japan, Thailand, Scotland, as well as all over the US & Canada.


"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book"

-- Henry David Thoreau


eading To Satisfy All Interests


Our inventory is quite varied.


While we have a concentration in Military History, we also carry Fiction, Literature, Science Fiction, Religion, Art, Architecture, Musicology, Science, Medicine, World History, Americana, Exploration, and Natural History.


Customers will notice our "bargain shelves" and magazines in the hallway outside our shop.


We'll also be starting an ongoing series of author readings and signings in the next few weeks. We hope this will highlight both local and nationally known authors in a variety of fields to reflect our own varied interests.


We even provide tables and chairs outside the door to sit and read your latest purchase


"Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book."

-- President Dwight David Eisenhower