The international rare-map community is a fairly small one, and E. Forbes Smiley III was one of the most well-known and respected dealers. He'd been involved in the business since the early 1980s and his knowledge of maps pertaining to the settling of the American continent was second to none. For many years he helped wealthy clients build staggering collections.
But his public bonhomie hid a dark secret: he was chronically short of cash. Over the years, as more of his checks bounced, more dealers became wary. But no one suspected that in order to cover his debts Smiley would do the unthinkable: he started stealing maps from institutions all over the world, sometimes slicing maps out of books four and five centuries old.
Much like Miles Harvey's The Island of Lost Maps, The Map Thief tells the tale of a man who got away with his theft for years. What makes Smiley so diabolical is that, as an esteemed map expert, he knew exactly which maps would garner the highest prices. He stole maps worth millions of dollars, decimating library collections in the process.
Michael Blanding (The Coke Machine) has compiled interviews with Smiley's friends and colleagues, FBI agents, librarians and even Smiley himself to piece together a portrait of a desperate man. A gripping mix of true crime, cartographic lore and bookish obsession, The Map Thief is a book that map and book lovers will devour, even as they cringe at the crimes described. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm