Author and Legal Scholar To Speak On Crimes Against Rare Books

Travis McDade, the country’s foremost expert on crimes against rare books, maps, documents and other printed cultural heritage resources, will speak at 1 p.m. on Saturday, September 19 in the Wyckoff Room in Bradley University's Cullom-Davis Library.

A lawyer and librarian, McDade serves as curator of Law Rare Books at the University of Illinois. The most recent of his books,Thieves of Book Row (Oxford University Press), is just out in paperback. Disappearing Ink: The Insider, the FBI, and the Looting of the Kenyon College Library has recently been released on Kindle. His first, The Book Thief, focused on notorious book bandit Daniel Spiegelman. That crime brought federal judicial recognition of books as cultural objects valued beyond market price – estimated at $1.8 million in Spiegelman’s case. 

McDade teaches Legal Research at U of I’s College of Law, and Rare Books, Crime & Punishment at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science on campus. McDade's books will be available for purchase. The program, co-sponsored by the Cullom-Davis Library and the Friends of Cullom-Davis Library, is free and open to the public.