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

In the late 1920s and early 1930s a ring of thieves, taking orders from a group of second-hand book dealers in lower Manhattan, stole from every public library within a five-state radius. That meant hundreds of institutions and hundreds of thousands of books. The thieves were so unafraid of arrest-or even the slightest resistance to their looting-that they carried out these thefts with little attempt to hide them. Very few people seemed to care at all. In this book, Travis McDade tells the story of the 1931 theft (and later recovery) of Edgar Allan Poe's Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems from the New York Public Library. The book brings readers into a vivid world in which Manhattan booksellers assumed such a theft would be an insignificant event. In fact, the ultimate downfall of this large criminal enterprise was the thieves' underestimation of the libraries. Since most institutions offered no resistance to the wholesale thefts, it was assumed that all libraries were comfortable being victims. But the New York Public Library proved otherwise. The NYPL had a long history of theft detection and prevention, a history precipitated by an early rash of thefts. So by January 1931, when a young book thief ran out of the front door of the NYPL onto Fifth Avenue, having just stolen three books-Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, and the extremely rare Al Aaraaf-from the fantastic rare book collection, the library was well equipped to react. From theft to conviction, McDade follows the story of NYPL special investigator William Bergquist, Book Row theft ring organizer Harry Gold, and Gold's on-the-ground thief Harold Borden Clarke, while providing rich context regarding the rare book world in early twentieth-century America.

Table of Contents:
Prologue ; Chapter 1: The Antics of the Leading Industrials ; Chapter 2: The Accumulated Wisdom ; Chapter 3: A Purloined Poe ; Chapter 4: Scholarship and Investigation ; Chapter 5: The Boston Scene ; Chapter 6: Someone Qualified as a Bookman ; Chapter 7: The People of the State of New York and their Dignity ; Chapter 8: That's the End of the Rare Book ; Epilogue ; Index

About the Author :
Travis McDade is curator of law rare books and associate professor of library administration at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Review :
Thieves is an engaging cat-and-mouse account of porous libraries, scouts armed with 'gall, confidence, and oversized coats,' complicit salesmen and of G. William Bergquist, the dogged New York Public Library investigator who cracked the gang's most audacious caper: the theft in 1931 of first editions of The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick and a rare Edgar Allan Poe collection." New York Times McDade does a superb job of drawing a complete picture of the environment in which the Romm Gang operated. McDade makes a smart choice to spin his tale around the mostly forgotten individuals who participated in a widespread scheme to steal library books. Los Angeles Times McDade's account is a better-informed account of [thief Harry] Gold than those in other sometimes misty-eyed and less hard-nosed portraits of Book Row. By concentrating on just a few men, McDade not only avoids many pitfalls in writing about the trade more generally, but also manages to bring this tale chronologically to a conclusion. It is not a very satisfactory conclusion, for this book raises larger questions: pointing a moral as well as adorning a tale. Times Literary Supplement Definitive history ... a fantastically colorful cast of characters and rich period detail will hook book lovers and historians of N.Y.C. Publishers Weekly A compelling history. Rich in characterization and vividly set, this tale of Manhattan's Fourth Avenue, known then as 'Book Row,' and its bookleggers makes for grand reading. Library Journal With wit, erudition, and a nice sense of timing, McDade recreates the seamy side of the antiquarian book business in Depression-era New York and Boston. This immensely engaging story will appeal to cultural historians, literary scholars, bibliophiles, and true-crime lovers alike. Joan Shelley Rubin, Professor of History, University of Rochester and author of Songs of Ourselves: The Uses of Poetry in America Thieves of Book Row chronicles a fascinating chapter in the history of the book trade, libraries, and organized crime. In a highly engaging narrative, McDade provides a wonderful portrait of books stolen and recovered and of many colorful characters ranging from rare book legends to petty thieves. Thomas Hyry, Director of Special Collections, UCLA Library Thieves of Book Row is an astonishing account of a highly organized and intrepid book-theft ring in New York during the 1920s and 1930s. Renae Satterly, Library & Information History McDade's narrative flows so well you forget you're reading actual events. He is somehow able to emphasise the close-calls and suspense of the story without sensationalising or exaggerating what occurred ... The book is very descriptive and involved, and I highly recommend it. Diana La Femina, Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals Newsletter