Morton Jacob Netzorg

In the 1950s the Netzorgs settled in Detroit, Michigan and opened the Cellar Book Shop specializing in material published in and about the Southeast Asia region and the Philippines and the Pacific Islands in particular, as well as East and South Asia, and Africa. Their business became the essential source of material dedicated to these regions in North America. Morton acquired warehouses of books, maps and other Filipiniana material, and shipped them to Detroit. He built the largest collection of Philippine children's book and textbooks. Morton himself became one of the most important bibliographers of the Philippines. He published extensively in Kinaadman (Wisdom), journal published in the Philippines, and other scholarly journals, and authored a number of important Filipiniana bibliographies and bibliographical essays, notably about children's literature and about the World War II period in the Philippines, as well as memoirs.