Baltimore book lovers come together to rebuild charity destroyed by fire

A man drops off books at The Book Thing.

It doesn't matter if customers at Baltimore's The Book Thing take home one book or 100, as it all costs the same: $0.

Every book inside The Book Thing is free, and there's no limit to how many books people can walk out the door with — some teachers are known to fill up several boxes to use in their classrooms, while casual readers might just grab one or two tomes off the shelves. Russell Wattenberg has been running The Book Thing for 17 years, never charging a dime for anything. "It cuts down on robberies," he joked to CBS News' Steve Hartman. "We encourage shoplifters."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.