A01=Travis McDade
Author_Travis McDade
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DNXC
Category=DSB
Category=GLM
Category=JKV
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
Category=NL-DS
Category=NL-GL
Category=NL-JK
COP=United States
Discount=15
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Format=BC
Format_Paperback
HMM=202
IMPN=Oxford University Press Inc
ISBN13=9780190239718
Language_English
PA=Available
PD=20151210
POP=New York
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
PUB=Oxford University Press Inc
SMM=17
Subject=Library & Information Sciences
Subject=Literature: History & Criticism
Subject=Social Services & Welfare- Criminology
WG=240
WMM=138
Product details
- ISBN 9780190239718
- Format: Paperback
- Weight: 218g
- Dimensions: 127 x 201 x 17mm
- Publication Date: 17 Sep 2015
- Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
- Publication City/Country: New York, US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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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 of The 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's Al 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.
Travis McDade is the author of The Book Thief: The True Crimes of Daniel Spiegelman and the curator of rare books at the University of Illinois College of Law. He teaches a class at Illinois called "Rare Books, Crime & Punishment."
