The first store opened in 1956 on Euclid Avenue in
Berkeley, California. It was founded by Fred (1916–1983) and Pat (1923–2010) Cody. It moved to a larger location on
Telegraph Avenue in 1960. As the business expanded, it outgrew this property too. In 1962, Steve Van Strum joined the staff and built up the French and German book sales. In 1964, Van Strum's investment counsellor father put in a bid for an old gas station on a corner lot nearby. The bid was successful and the father gave the Codys and his son a free hand to design a building fit for a good bookshop, one with high ceilings, plenty of light and soft wood and textiles to surround the books. Steve Van Strum created a poetry festival in the Spring of 1965 with an unusually large collection of 1,000 poetry titles on exhibit and on sale and poets reading on site. The bookshop moved to the new building in 1965, it becoming the largest store dedicated to paperbacks in the area. Van Strum was key to the growing international connections of the book store, attending the Frankfurt Book Fair and liaising with Oxford University Press. He left, with his wife
Carol Van Strum and children, in 1968 after which the Codys once again had the total responsibility of managing the store. In 1968, "Cody's served as a first-aid station […] when anti-war protesters were tear gassed and clubbed just outside its Telegraph Avenue doors […] the store's employees were tending the woundedanti-war protesters teargassed and clubbed by the police and the National Guard as protests broke out on Telegraph Avenue." In the early 1970s,
Mario Savio worked as a clerk at the Telegraph Avenue store. In 1977, the Codys sold the store to Andy Ross, who owned it until 2006. Cody's was best known for its extensive selection of poetry, literary, political, and scholarly titles. On February 28, 1989, unknown persons threw a
firebomb through the window of the store. It was thought that this was in response to the prominent display of
Salman Rushdie's
The Satanic Verses, which had been banned by a
fatwa by
Iranian
clerics one month prior. An undetonated pipe bomb was subsequently discovered in the store. In response the staff unanimously voted to keep the book on display despite the attack and the increasing willingness of chain bookstores to bow to pressure to withdraw it. Cody's pioneered a well-regarded author-reading series. Some prominent authors and notables who appeared at Cody's were:
Tom Robbins,
Norman Mailer,
Ken Kesey,
Alice Walker,
Allen Ginsberg,
Maurice Sendak,
Bill Clinton,
Jimmy Carter,
Muhammad Ali, and
Salman Rushdie. In the 1980s, Cody's was a plaintiff in several anti-trust lawsuits charging that independent book sellers were discriminated against in favor of chain stores. Cody's owner, Andy Ross, was a prominent spokesperson supporting independent businesses against chain stores and Internet retailers. == Neighborhood booksellers ==