Books & Co

Books & Co., a bookstore in New York City, was the brainchild of Jeannette Watson, (b. 1945), born out of a life-long love of literature. Watson, the granddaughter of IBM founder, Thomas Watson, Sr. was named for her grand-mother, Jeannette Kittredge. Watson, shy and insecure as a child, was dubbed "Madame-Nose-in-Books" by her father because she preferred to spend her time reading rather than socializing. She was born and raised in a Greenwich, Connecticut family which included one older brother and four younger sisters. She was educated in public elementary schools until age 12, then sent to a private boarding school and Sarah Lawrence College where she majored in early childhood education. As early as her senior year she and her friends discussed dreams about owning a bookstore.

Watson married in her senior year and had a son very shortly after. After graduation her new family moved to Grosse Point, MI, but neither her marriage nor time in the Midwest was to last very long. Divorcing at age 26, she returned to New York as a working single mother. In the summer of 1978, just after Watson opened Books & Co., she was re-introduced to a childhood acquaintance at a family wedding. Alex Sanger, the grandson of birth-control proponent Margaret Sanger, was an attorney at that time (later he became President of Planned Parenthood). They married in December 21, 1978. Privately she uses her married name: Jeannette Sanger.

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