Book Gangs of NY

If you subscribe to our printed quarterly, then you have had the pleasure of reading an excerpt from Travis McDade's Thieves of Book Row: New York's Most Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Stopped It (Oxford University Press, June, $27.95). I received a copy of the finished book last week and am just past the midway point, so this is not a review--I imagine my decision to print an excerpt in our spring issue speaks for the book's merits. McDade offers clear descriptions of behind-the-scenes book stealing (and selling) along New York's Book Row and shows how it touched the "uptown" dealers, librarians, and collectors. The book is smart and suspenseful.

McDade is the curator of rare books at the University of Illinois College of Law. If you missed them, you should read his two recent blog posts on "The professionalization of library theft" and "Barry Landau's coat pockets," too.