The story of an infamous crime, a revered map dealer with an unsavory secret, and the ruthless subculture that consumed him Maps have long exerted a special fascination on viewers--both as beautiful works of art and as practical tools to navigate the world. But to those who collect them, the map trade can be a cutthroat business, inhabited by quirky and sometimes disreputable characters in search of a finite number of extremely rare objects. Once considered a respectable antiquarian map dealer, E. Forbes Smiley spent years doubling as a map thief --until he was finally arrested slipping maps out of books in the Yale University library. "The Map Thief" delves into the untold history of this fascinating high-stakes criminal and the inside story of the industry that consumed him. Acclaimed reporter Michael Blanding has interviewed all the key players in this stranger-than-fiction story, and shares the fascinating histories of maps that charted the New World, and how they went from being practical instruments to quirky heirlooms to highly coveted objects. Though pieces of the map theft story have been written before, Blanding is the first reporter to explore the story in full--and had the rare privilege of having access to Smiley himself after he'd gone silent in the wake of his crimes. Moreover, although Smiley swears he has admitted to all of the maps he stole, libraries claim he stole hundreds more--and offer intriguing clues to prove it. Now, through a series of exclusive interviews with Smiley and other key individuals, Blanding teases out an astonishing tale of destruction and redemption. "The Map Thief" interweaves Smiley's escapades with the stories of the explorers and mapmakers he knew better than anyone. Tracking a series of thefts as brazen as the art heists in "Provenance" and a subculture as obsessive as the oenophiles in "The Billionaire's Vinegar," Blanding has pieced together an unforgettable story of high-stakes crime.

Product Description: Maps have long exerted a special fascination on viewers-both as beautiful works of art and as practical tools to navigate the world. But to those who collect them, the map trade can be a cutthroat business, inhabited by quirky and sometimes disreputable characters in search of a finite number of extremely rare objects...read more

This book provides an assessment of Thatcher's foreign policy throughout her years in office, 1979-90. Successive chapters cover her partnership with Carrington, the Falklands War, Thatcher's American policy, her fights with the EC over money and institutional development, her relationship with Gorbachev, and the failure of her German policy. The main argument is that Thatcher's attempt to reconcile economic liberalism with political nationalism in a more assertive foreign policy prefigured the emerging statecraft of post-Cold War great power politics. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Fashionable new theories tend to reject universal reason in favour of pluralism and locality. Marxism, Mysticism and Modern Theory examines some of these theories and argues that they are the mystified expression of the current political and economic impasse...read more