Grooming minds.

For many years Rueben Martinez worked as a barber and hair stylist in East Los Angeles and Santa Ana, California. But even before he was a barber, Martinez had a love of reading. As a boy in Miami, Arizona, he would sneak over to his neighbors' front yard before sunrise to read their newspaper before they took it in.

After he opened his barber shop, Martinez started bringing some of his favorite books to the shop to read during slack periods. His in-store collection eventually grew to 200 books, and his enthusiasm for reading was so infectious that his customers frequently asked to borrow books. Martinez became a very successful hair stylist, yet he never stopped encouraging his customers to share in his literary collection, much of it in the prevalent Spanish language of his neighborhood.

In 1993, Martinez decided to open a bookstore inside his salon, selling mainly Spanish language books. Since he was already prosperous financially, he did not view his book-selling endeavor as a commercial venture so much as a mission to help improve the literacy rate of the Hispanic community. "If you become literate in your own language, that will lead you to become even more interested in the English language," he would tell people. His inventory included many Spanish translations of works originally written in English, such as El Viejo y el Mar (The Old Man and the Sea) by Ernest Hemingway, English-language classics from authors such as Lewis Carroll and Jane Austen, and a large self-help section, featuring translations of Stephen R. Covey's famous Seven Habits series.

Word of Martinez's work to promote literacy and a love of learning in the Hispanic community reached the MacArthur Foundation committee responsible for awarding the foundation's annual "genius grant" in 2004. A committee representative contacted Martinez by phone to tell him that he, along with 22 other Americans, would receive the grant--a gift of $500,000, distributed over five years. In awarding the grant, the representative commented that Martinez has "elevated bookselling from a business to a campaign in support of underserved populations." The foundation stated that Martinez had used his bookstore as a launching pad for community programs promoting and celebrating literature.

"This [grant] couldn't have gone to a better guy," said actor Edward James Olmos, who co-founded the Latino Book Festival with Martinez. "He's shown one of the strongest commitments I've seen to an area of vital importance. The literacy rate among our people is frightening."

Martinez will use the grant to achieve his goal of establishing 25 bookstores similar to his original one by 2012. And, as a tribute to his origins, each store will have a barber chair in the middle of it!