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

McDade (curator of rare books, Univ. of Illinois Coll. of Law; The Book Thief) unfolds a saga styled as a whodunit. This is the tale of a book theft ring based in 1920s and 1930s New York City that plundered public and private libraries from Washington, DC to Boston. The recipients of this bibliographic wealth? The used-book dealers of Manhattan's storied "Book Row" (long gone) on 4th Avenue. The most infamous was Harry Gold, who recruited down-on-their-luck individuals to purloin literary treasures from libraries. He masterminded the most famous theft on January 10, 1931, of works by Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville, all taken from the New York Public Library's (NYPL's) supposedly impregnable rare-books room. McDade outlines how U.S. library materials had been vulnerable to theft largely owing to a policy of unrestricted access. The magnitude of these crimes, however, forced libraries to increase security, restrict access, and even hire private investigators such as NYPL's G. William Bergquist, who ultimately helped break this ring.