Walden Book Company, Inc., doing business as Waldenbooks, was an American shopping mall-based bookstore chain and a subsidiary of Borders.

On March 4, 1933, Lawrence Hoyt (1902–1982),[1][2] a former sales manager for Simon & Schuster,[3] and Melvin T. Kafka (1905–1992)[4][5] opened a rental library within leased space inside a Bridgeport, Connecticut, department store under the name Walden Book Company (named for Henry David Thoreau's Walden, a meditation on simple living in natural surroundings).

With the increased availability of low-cost paperbacks after the Second World War, rental library services were eventually replaced with retail book selling.

[10] For the stand-alone bookstores, the company initially traded under the name Walden Books, written as two words.

In 1984, Waldenbooks itself was acquired by Kmart after Carter Hawley Hale needed to get cash to defend itself from a hostile takeover attempt.

In 1985, it opened a discount book outlet chain called Reader's Market by converting five existing stand-alone Waldenbooks stores.

[33][34] On July 18, 2011, Borders Group filed for liquidation to close all of its remaining Waldenbooks and other stores.