Bar­ber poles twirl back to the Mid­dle Ages, when bar­ber-sur­geons hung bloody rags in the wind to dry. This ancient sym­bol might have van­ished were it not for the chutz­pah and inno­va­tion of a Jew­ish bar­ber sup­ply sales­man in Min­neso­ta in the 1950s. William Mar­vy invent­ed the mod­ern bar­ber poles that punc­tu­ate Main Streets across the coun­try and around the world. Now the only bar­ber pole mak­ers left in Amer­i­ca, the Mar­vy fam­i­ly has tak­en its quirky niche into a third gen­er­a­tion and 80th year. Meet the man cred­it­ed with sav­ing an ancient, well-known sym­bol and cel­e­brate a clas­sic Jew­ish fam­i­ly busi­ness. The book, loaded with pho­tos, includes a vis­it to the fac­to­ry floor and cross-coun­try tour of bar­ber shops with Mar­vy poles, from the South Side of Chica­go to the high plains of Duran­go, CO.