In 2016, the bookstore published its own history in a book titled "Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart", edited by Krista Halverson with a foreword by Jeanette Winterson and an epilogue by Sylvia Whitman. Other contributors to the book include Ethan Hawke, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Anaïs Nin, Robert Stone, Ian Rankin, Kate Tempest, and Jim Morrison. The book features an illustrated adaptation of Sylvia Beach's memoirs. It also includes a selection of George Whitman's letters and journals written along his "hobo adventures" during the Great Depression. The kindness he received from strangers along the way inspired the founding ethos of the bookstore: "Give what you can; take what you need."