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A Blast from the Past: The Book Theif
He didn’t learn his lesson. Stephen Blumberg was convicted of burglary again in Des Moines in 1997, after being charged with stealing antique furnishings from a house in Des Moines. He had been out of prison barely two years after serving a 4 ½ year sentence for a previous conviction in Des Moines. What was he looking for at the house? Blumberg had an obsession for collecting antique objects. He started collecting antiques from condemned houses in his youth. One of the collections found at his house were nearly 50,000 door knobs.
Over more than twenty years, Stephen Blumberg stole more than 23,000 rare books from 268 libraries including 10,000 manuscripts from 140 or more universities in 45 states and Canada. Their value has been placed at about $20 million, making it the largest theft of rare books in the country. Blumberg is considered to be the number one thief of books in American history. He would steal the books in any way that he could. He was a James Bond and Mission Impossible rolled into one. He would crawl through anything including elevator shafts, ventilation ducts, and do whatever necessary to elude alarms and security guards. He had one thing on his mind and nothing was going to stop him. He didn’t want just any book. A certain library would have a specific rare book or manuscript for which he obsessed.
More about Stephen Blumberg can be found in the book “A Gentle Madness” by Nicholas A. Basbanes.
Posted under Living Downtown
Tags: Blast from the Past
