book collecting

"Over the last forty years, Aaron Lansky has jumped into dumpsters, rummaged around musty basements, and crawled through cramped attics. He did all of this in pursuit of a particular kind of treasure, and he's found plenty. Lansky's treasure was any book written in Yiddish, the language of generations of European Jews. When he started looking for Yiddish books, experts estimated there might be about 70,000 still in existence. Since then, the MacArthur Genius Grant recipient has collected close to 1.5 million books, and he's finding more every day. Told in a folkloric voice reminiscent of Patricia Polacco, this story celebrates the power of an individual to preserve history and culture, while exploring timely themes of identity and immigration"--From the publisher's web site.

Few collectors are as passionate or as dogged in the pursuit of their quarry as collectors of rare books. These are the stories of remarkable discoveries from the world of book collecting. Read about the family whose discovery in their attic of a copy of Action Comics No. 1--the first appearance of Superman--saved their home from foreclosure. Or the Salt Lake City bookseller who volunteered for a local fundraiser--and came across a 500-year-old copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle. Or the collector who, while browsing his local thrift shop, found a collectible copy of Calvary in China--inscribed by the author to the collector's grandfather. These tales and many others will entertain and inspire casual collectors and hardcore bibliomaniacs alike.

Journalist Allison Hoover Bartlett uncovers a subculture of literary fanatics when she follows Ken Saunders, an amateur detective and collector of rare books, while he pursues Gilkey, a book-loving thief.

"The first edition of Shakespeare's collected works, the First Folio, published in 1623, is one of the most valuable books in the world and has historically proven to be an attractive target for thieves. Of the 160 First Folios listed in a census of 1902, 14 were subsequently stolen-and only two of these were ever recovered. In his efforts to catalog all these precious First Folios, renowned Shakespeare scholar Eric Rasmussen embarked on a riveting journey around the globe, involving run-ins with heavily tattooed criminal street gangs in Tokyo, bizarre visits with eccentric, reclusive billionaires, and intense battles of wills with secretive librarians. He explores the intrigue surrounding the Earl of Pembroke, arguably Shakespeare's boyfriend, to whom the First Folio is dedicated and whose personal copy is still missing. He investigates the uncanny sequence of events in which a wealthy East Coast couple drowned in a boating accident and the next week their First Folio appeared for sale in Kansas. We hear about Folios that were censored, the pages ripped out of them, about a volume that was marked in red paint-or is it blood?-on every page; and of yet another that has a bullet lodged in its pages. Part literary detective story, part Shakespearean lore, The Shakespeare Thefts will charm the Bard's many fans"--.

The possibility of recovering a copy of an unknown edition of a rare book leads a rare bookseller across the country to a young woman who shares his love for books and may be the rare book thief he is after.

Edward Wozny's curiosity turns to mystery and obsession when he realizes that a medieval codex may be hidden among a personal library of rare books and enlists the help of Margaret Napier, a medieval scholar, to help him discover the strange history that lies within its pages.

Aaron Lansky shares the story of his twenty-five-year quest to rescue the world's abandoned Yiddish books, a mission that led to the establishment of the National Yiddish Book Center, and provides information about the origins of the Yiddish language, as well as introductions to notable Yiddish writers.

Mr. Ruche finds himself involved in a bizarre series of events when he inherits a vast mathematical library from a long-lost friend in the Amazon and the little boy whose family Mr. Ruche lives with discovers a parrot with an astounding knowledge of math.