Travis McDadeReseñas

I abandoned this book, so take my review with a grain of salt.

The meandering anecdotes never combined into a good narrative. It just felt like a bunch of strung together little stories, rather than one big one. Perhaps if I had continued reading, I would have found the big story (as one of the other reviewers suggests), but I read about a third of the book, and never found it.

While the stories were interesting, after a few chapters, they just started getting repetitive. And I lost interest. Might be good for people with a big interest in New York City or the book business.

Told with McDade's usual mix of solid research and engaging storytelling, this account of a massive destruction of book art in 1980 is sad and depressing. Aside from the story particulars, the general theme is the same unveiled in his other histories: the general public, including most law enforcement, does not regard book theft and destruction as all that serious. Even when caught, most perpetrators receive minimal sentences. Until that changes, thieving from libraries will be viewed as a low-risk endeavor.

In that vein I can add that I have several times purchased a used book online, and discovered by the markings (or lack thereof), plus some internet searching, that the book is considered lost by the original library. It was not deaccessed. Booksellers have never reacted well to this news, instead becoming very defensive. The libraries, because we aren't talking rare volumes, sometimes seem polite but nonchalant to learn what became of their missing book, and that it will be returned to them. But one does what one must.

A very readable, straightforward account of David Breithaupt's thefts from the Kenyon College library (and several others), as well as the ensuing legal cases. A useful case study and an example of the affected library reacting appropriately and strongly to special collections theft.

I've read all of the works by this author, and I have to say this is probably the weakest. The construction of the story was so immediately straightforward that there was not even a hint of suspense or mystery. Labeling a legal decision by the thieves as awful signaled that the case would be lost, making any forward momentum of the narrative all but impossible. The story he tells in inherently interesting, so it is still a worthwhile read. It just struck as more of a police blotter than a story to draw the reader in. The thief, btw, is some kind of reporter in LA now, encumbered not at all for being a convicted destroyer of literary treasures. The author should have obtained some of that background, to find out why people don't care.½

A lot of fun. Some great characters, great stories, and a truly evocative picture of 4th Avenue/"Book Row" in its book selling heyday. Despite it being quite a good read, it can't live up to its lofty subtitle. At no point was it demonstrated that there was a "ring" anywhere past a market that good thieves and bent sellers capitalized on. And it really only spends a chapter or two on Berquist, the ostensible "man" of the title. Anyway, it's a fun read but it's really more a series of interconnected vignettes or articles than a true narrative. Book lovers and collectors will love it.½

Disappointing. The "crimes" section of the book takes up only about sixty pages, while a long discourse on sentencing law and procedure took up about a hundred pages. It's also a bit misleading to wait until the author's note in the back of the book to note that Spiegelman was not interviewed for this story.

Even though the thefts at Columbia were a compelling story, the author's awkward style often seemed childlike in trying to draw out some drama. Add to that the numerous typographical errors and poor editing, and the result is a magazine article that got rushed into a book-length manuscript.

A fun and interesting read about the early days of the 20th century in the book trade. This was a time where books were stolen from libraries then they were scrubbed of all labels and marks and made their way into the secondary book trade.

This is written as a (late) review for LTER. While I enjoyed the overall information imparted in this book, I did not find it too well laid out. It skipped around to different times and characters a little too randomly in my opinion. It also did not seem to have a continuity of story from beginning to middle to end following an investigation into the overall theft ring.
One bit of information I found shocking was the prices paid for some of these rare books! Tens of thousands of dollars and more which to my mind seems like alot in today's dollars.
I did learn much I did not know before, but had hoped to be more entertained while learning it.

Full disclosure: I assisted the author by reading and commenting on an early draft of this book, and am acknowledged within.

Travis McDade's Thieves of Book Row: New York's Most Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Stopped It (Oxford University Press, 2013) is the meticulously-researched account of one of the worst (if not the worst) book theft rings in American history, a loosely-connected web of thieves and the unscrupulous booksellers who benefited from their actions (or, in some cases, were the masterminds behind the thefts). The thieves struck libraries throughout the Northeast, but their loot typically ended up in New York, among the bookstores of the city's famed Book Row.

The story is a complex one, with lots of characters, a wide geographic spread, and more than a bit of legal detail to be navigated. McDade manages it admirably, though the most casual of readers may be a bit put off by the ins and outs of the theft cases he recounts. As someone who takes much interest in stories like this, I was more than happy with the level of detail (in fact, I was absolutely delighted by it).

McDade captures very well the somewhat tense relations between booksellers and librarians during the period under consideration (something which has in the intervening decades changed markedly for the better), and the important ways in which police and judicial attention play into the ultimate disposition of book theft cases, then as now. And he does an excellent job at explaining the way(s) the theft ring did its dirty business, how investigators ultimately were able to at least remove some of its most active participants from the scene, and some of the policy changes libraries implemented as a result of these thefts (which of course haven't stopped thefts from libraries, but at least have made them somewhat more difficult).

An important look at this dark period of American bookselling history.

The story slips away from McDade at various points, but he otherwise does an admirable job of pulling together the disparate threads of book thievery during the early 20th Century into a single coherent, and at times even riveting tale.

I’m reluctant to describe this book as meticulously researched, although it certainly is, because that phrase implies that it is a bit dull and pedantic.

I think that if the subject matter is of great interest, as it was to me, that the book is well worth reading. But even for someone as obsessed with books and book culture as I am Book Row is less than thrilling.

I’m a book lover and collector who volunteers with several Friends of the Library groups and hangs out in book stores, and in a limited fashion, I’m a book scout. I also have a strong interest in crime having majored in criminal justice and been a police reporter in my youth. So as a book about the development of public libraries in the U.S. and organized theft from them, early book selling and book scouting, Thieves of Book row seemed like a book that was made for me.

Travis McDade certainly provides lots of details, all of them properly footnoted, but his prose lacks an emotional connection to the characters he’s discussing. I’m currently reading The Napoleon of Crime by Ben Macintyre, also a well-researched book about historical crimes, and the characters in it seem to have much more life. Similarly, Aaron Cometbus’s The Loneliness of the Electric Menorah, published as an issue of his zine Cometbus, is a fascinating and well-researched book about bookstore history while bringing the characters to life.

I don’t object to the footnotes themselves at all. In fact, I often wondered just how McDade knew about some of the details he describes or conversations he relates, but the footnotes alleviated my skepticism.

One of the details I found particularly interesting included the fact that the New York Public Library had a librarian who was also a sworn police officer employed just to combat crimes against the library. I’ve been a fan of Jason Shiga’s graphic novel Bookhunter about a squad of library detectives working for the Oakland Public Library, but I never thought that his premise was anything but an amusing fantasy.

I enjoyed reading the book, as I am the exact target audience for the book, but I don’t know who else I could recommend this book to.

I was originally supposed to get this as an e-book through the Early Reviewers program. However, when it "arrived", I was instructed that I had to register at another site in order to download it. Not happening, folks! Fortunately, I was able to get it through Amazon Vine.

This is a fascinating account of organized book theft rings that operated during the Depression. They stole from both bookstores and libraries, and then sold those books to other bookstores and libraries. McDade describes their methods of filching volumes and eliminating the library markings, how they stored and sold the books. What's really pathetic is the fact that so many book dealers turned a blind eye to the source of the books they were offered at (relatively) bargain prices, and that many in law enforcement didn't care. "Oh, it's just books." Fortunately, there were a few who DID care, librarians who developed methods of protecting books, booksellers who reported attempts to sell stolen volumes, and a few in law enforcement who hunted down the miscreants.

Just books! Reading the description of Manhattan's "Book Row", six blocks "packed with booksellers . . . in all shapes and sizes . . . an area that was home to more than a million books" makes me sad (particularly as one of my favorite local used bookstores has just announced that it is moving). It made me nostalgic for Kroch's & Brentano's, the Prairie Avenue Bookstore, Printers Row Fine & Rare Books, and so many more that we've lost over the years.

Book Row was “the” place to buy and sell used books in New York. During the Depression some people resorted to stealing when they couldn’t find work. This book tells the story of a notorious book theft ring working the libraries in Massachusetts and New York. The thieves would steal books from libraries “scrub” them of library markings and sell them to dealers on Book Row. Some of the purloined books were taken from the rare books room of different libraries and were quiet valuable. The book dealers weren’t naïve, they knew what was going on, but they were desperate for good stock. The libraries hired men to track down the stolen items and bring the thieves to justice.

I read this book because I work in the antiquarian book field. It’s amazing how much things remain the same. The internet has changed the book field considerably, but the types of books that are considered collectable hasn’t changed. The way con-artists steal books hasn’t changed either. We have had more than a few book thieves try to steal from our store or try to sell us what they have stolen from other stores. They use the same tactics today as they used in the 1930’s.

Even though this is a subject I am interested in, the book was a very dry read. It was hard to keep track of names. The author peppers the narrative with so much history that when you finally get back to the story you can’t remember who did what where. I would only recommend this book to book sellers or librarians who are really interested in the history of antiquarian books. I don’t think it would hold the interest of the casual reader.

Travis McDade's Thieves of Book Row covers a remarkable number of years (much of the 1920s and 1930s) during which East Coast public and university libraries were systematically looted of their most precious books. What makes the organized thievery so remarkable is that major New York book dealers (such as Harry Gold, Charles Romm, and Ben Harris) were not only eager to put the books on their bookstore shelves, they actively recruited the very thieves who were so good at stealing the books.

This was all much easier than one imagines it would be today. Most law enforcement officials, including judges responsible for determining the penalties for book theft, did not consider rare book theft to be a crime worthy of an extended prison sentence. Even librarians, both public and university ones, were not overly concerned about loosing a few books - until the magnitude of their losses finally became impossible to ignore. And rich, prominent Americans were so keen to build private libraries of their own (also recognizing that rare books were one of the better investments available to them) that stolen books quickly changed hands and were lost to their original owners forever. One suspects, in fact, that some of the finest collections in the United States were greatly improved during this period. Finally, one man decided that enough was enough.

Thieves of Book Row is his story. William Berquist, investigator for the New York Public Library, made it his life's mission to prosecute book thieves and recover stolen books. He organized his fellow library detectives, librarians, and honest booksellers - and worked directly with law enforcement officials who took the crime seriously - to finally break the backs of the book theft rings. Sadly, however, no one will ever know how many thousands of rare books were never recovered or were inadvertently destroyed by the thieves.

Bottom Line: Thieves of Book Row will most appeal to those who enjoy reading "books about books." It belongs in the True Crime genre but, both in the author's style and in the nature of the crimes detailed, it makes for some rather dry reading. Exciting, it is not - but book lovers and avid readers are likely to enjoy reading about a crime wave that forever changed the way public libraries handle rare books.

Rated at: 3.0

Thieves of Book Row is clearly well researched and supported, and the pages contain a pretty fascinating tale of a part of American East Coast history I'd bet few people know much about. McDade gives us an overview of the stolen book trade, intelligently discusses some of the economic factors behind it, and presents a great deal of information about particular thieves and particular thefts. I think the content has the potential to appeal to a broad variety of readers. However, to me, the book was profoundly lacking in organization. Whole paragraphs would appear to be out of synch - for example, a name with no reference would be introduced, only to have the person explained and discussed at length in a later section. Or the chronology of a tale would appear to jump around in the telling. I think McDade and his editors struggled with the best way to combine the 8,000 foot view with the details, and I think the book might lose readers who aren't willing to keep track mentally of where things go, or can become impatient with the jumping around. However, I think it's worth putting up with, and is likely overall to appeal to people who like history, Americana, and books about literature; I don't think it's likely to be as good a fit for mystery readers generally, especially those who are used to narrative plot consistency.½

Thieves of Book Row is a book about the organized rings of book thieves, and the men trying to catch them, in and around New York during the 1920's and 30's. As a librarian, I know that sometimes our books will "disappear from the shelf" or "walk out the door" and not return. However, I never knew there had been such a business built up around stealing rare books from libraries. I found this both fascinating and appalling.

The book follows a number of thieves, booksellers, and law enforcement librarians, and I admit that I sometimes had trouble keeping track of their names. Despite that, I enjoyed seeing how their paths crossed, how the books were stolen and (rarely) recovered, and how the thieves were brought to justice (or just given a slap on the wrist). If you have an interest in rare books or libraries, Thieves of Book Row is worth reading.

The Amazon review of 'The Thieves of Book Row' by Travis McDade describes the book as a "griping tale" and "fast-paced, true-life thriller". Even for Amazon this description is a bit of excessive hyperbola. 'Thieves' is certainly not a Baldacci or Berry thriller in real-life.

More accurately McDade gives us a well research comprehensive look into an interesting period of book selling, libraries and book theft. Most of the activity takes place just prior and during the Depression years.

'Thieves' is a comprehensive description of the characters of the New York and Boston book trade and significant libraries on both sides of the law.

My biggest criticism of McDade's writing is it's scholarly style. McDade errors on the side of completeness rather than making a tightly written and edited text for the average reader. For example, numerous times in the book McDade explains for each book thief that they most often used large overcoats with multiple interior pockets to conceal books and remove them from libraries. It does get tiresome to read this refrain throughout the book.

However, this criticism aside, McDade does illustrate a fascinating time when valuable americana first editions were readily available on public library shelves. Given the dire economic times and lax judicial view of book theft it is completely understandable how criminals could be drawn in.

The reader is left with a lasting impression and nagging question at the completion of 'Thieves'. How many of today's very rare first editions of americana were at one time on public library shelves and stolen by book thieves? McDade regularly asserts that "many thousands" of books went through the hands of the theft rings and only a very small number were ever recovered.

The story is a fascinating glimpse into the world of rare book theft that plagued U.S. libraries. Having read “The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett I was fascinated by this very little known but culturally and intellectually devastating crime of rare book theft and was eager to read “Thieves of Book Row: New York's Most Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Stopped It.”

The author provides a very detailed an interesting description of the rare book business in the early 1900s identifying book thieves, librarians/libraries/victims and “book cops.” I enjoyed learning about the techniques used to steal books and the subsequent investigations and prosecutions as well as the litany of thieves and disreputable booksellers.

However I found the style to be a bit stilted and tedious with too many names and references. At times I felt as if I was reading a dry thesis and at times I found myself mentally straying from the story.

Interesting story about the early days of the rare book business. I had no idea that so many libraries were plundered so easily by book thieves in the beginning of the twentieth century. As a librarian now in a public library, I can see how simple it must've been to take advantage of the open stacks of libraries. The author does a good job of weaving the personal stories in with the history, though the narrative was confusing at points as he moved to different eras and people. Overall, a quick, informative read, especially if you are interested in rare books.

This book is a very unique account of historical crime that most people never even imagined would have existed – library book theft in the first few decades of the 1900s. The author does an excellent job taking the reader back to a time before libraries had electronic card catalogs, bar codes, and magnetic theft-prevention devices. The book is a fascinating read. It was incredibly effective at detailing the primitive attempts by librarians to counteract the theft and the great lengths thieves and fences would go through to launder stolen books.

It loses points for weaving the somewhat meandering plot line near the beginning of the book that eventually congeals about a third of the way through. Also, perhaps due to the historical subject matter, I had a hard time fully grasping the scope and importance of the topic; at some points, library theft appeared like a potential death-knell for the public library system but at other times felt restricted to a handful of Depression-era thugs.

I thought this was a fascinating book. I had no idea that the stealing of books was such a lucrative business back in the early 1900's. Rings of thieves stole books for book dealers as a way to make a living. It was amazing that libraries didn't have practices in place to foil these thieves, but alot of times the library didn't even know the books were gone. These crooks had a regular circuit they traveled to steal books. A book dealer would sometimes give a list of books they wanted and the thieves would fill the order.

The last chapter of the book was about a Cincinnati, Ohio thief and Cincinnati book dealer who bought the books. Since IO live in Cincinnati this was most interesting. This Cincinnati thief was very active and it took 7 years before he slipped up and was caught. He even stole books from the Library of Congress.

A good fast read.

The Book Thief: The True Crimes of Daniel Spiegelman is an account of the theft of numerous rare books and manuscrips from the Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscripts Library in the early 1990s, as well as the multi-year quest to bring the culprit to justice. Travis McDade, currently the Assistant Professor of Library Administration at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's College of Law, has written what must be considered the definitive monograph on this case, barring any further developments (much of Spiegelman's haul has still not been recovered, and since the man is now out of jail again, more shoes could yet drop).

What is remarkable about the Spiegelman case, McDade argues, is that the crime was taken very seriously by federal judge Lewis Kaplan, who went out of his way to depart from federal sentencing guidelines and add to Spiegelman's jail term. This was based largely on the efforts of Columbia librarians and other scholars, who through written and oral testimony made clear that Spiegelman's crimes should not be examined simply in light of any monetary value the stolen objects had, but also in terms of the cultural and scholarly implications.

McDade notes that this book began as a research paper, and it still retains that sort of feel. He does not have the talent of Nicholas Basbanes or Miles Harvey for telling a good story; thankfully the Spiegelman drama holds enough water on its own to make this book interesting even through a writing style which is somewhat clunky. Additionally, another round of copy-editing might have improved the book, which contains multiple typographical and grammatical errors. Nonetheless, for those concerned with the protection of our cultural heritage from people like Spiegelman, McDade has written a book well worth reading.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2007/01/book-revew-book-thief.html½