Thieves of Book Row: New York's Most Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Stopped It

McDade, Travis

ISBN 10: 0199922667 / ISBN 13: 9780199922666

Verlag: Oxford University Press, 2013

Beschreibung

A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (including dust cover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or limited small stickers. Book may have a remainder mark or be a price cutter.

Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers CU-01-05-02-0389

Bibliografische Details

• Titel: Thieves of Book Row: New York's Most Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Stopped It
• Verlag: Oxford University Press
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN-10: 0199922667
• ISBN-13: 9780199922666
• Einband: Hardcover
• Zustand: Good

Über diesen Titel

Inhaltsangabe

No one had ever tried a caper like this before. The goods were kept in a secure room under constant scrutiny, deep inside a crowded building with guards at the exits. The team picked for the job included two old hands known only as Paul and Swede, but all depended on a fresh face, a kid from Pinetown, North Carolina. In the Depression, some fellows were willing to try anything -- even a heist in the rare book room of the New York Public Library.

In Thieves of Book Row, Travis McDade tells the gripping tale of the worst book-theft ring in American history, and the intrepid detective who brought it down. Author ofThe Book Thief and a curator of rare books, McDade transforms painstaking research into a rich portrait of Manhattan's Book Row in the 1920s and '30s, where organized crime met America's cultural treasures in dark and crowded shops along gritty Fourth Avenue. Dealers such as Harry Gold, a tough native of the Lower East Side, became experts in recognizing the value of books and recruiting a pool of thieves to steal them -- many of them unemployed men who drifted up the Bowery or huddled around fires in Central Park's shantytowns. When Paul and Swede brought a new recruit into his shop, Gold trained him for the biggest score yet: a first edition of Edgar Allan Poe'sAl Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems. Gold's recruit cased the rare-book room for weeks, searching for a weakness. When he found one, he struck, leading to a breathtaking game of wits between Gold and NYPL special investigator G. William Bergquist.

Both a fast-paced, true-life thriller, Thieves of Book Row provides a fascinating look at the history of crime and literary culture.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Travis McDade is the author of The Book Thief: The True Crimes of Daniel Spiegelmanand the curator of rare books at the University of Illinois College of Law. He teaches a class at the University of Illinois called "Rare Books, Crime & Punishment."