Article content It’s not often that a single retail location can encapsulate the recent history of an industry, but such is the case of 128 Bank St. For decades, Prospero The Book Company has been a fixture for downtown book lovers, a place to shop for high-quality tomes covering biography, political theory and computer science. The store gave every sign it was self-reliant. We apologize, but this video has failed to load. Try refreshing your browser, or The amazing journey of Prospero Books comes to an end Back to video Yet Prospero, which closed its doors this week, has not been independent for decades. Therein lies a strange tale of a book store that kept its cool for so many years while its industry was in tumult.