San Antonio College Library

When, in 1800, Congress purchased the first volumes for the Library of Congress, no one expected its modest acquisition to grow into a treasure-trove of 76 million objects! Less than one quarter of the collection is bound volumes. The Library also has almost every phonograph record made in the United States, the largest collection of motion pictures in America, more maps, globes, and charts, more Civil War photographs, more Stradivari violins, more...

The goods were kept in a secure room under constant scrutiny, deep inside a crowded building with guards at the exits. In the Depression, some fellows were willing to try anything-- even a heist in the rare book room of the New York Public Library. McDade tells the gripping tale of the worst book-theft ring in American history, and the intrepid detective who brought it down. The goods: a first edition of Edgar Allan Poe's Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and...