It's time to put another book on the sidebar.  I don't remember exactly how I got this one.  I think it was sort of an accident.  But it was good kind of accident.

The Island of Lost Maps is probably not for everyone.  If you read the comments at Amazon, you will see that it is sort of a love it or hate it kind of book.

It is the story of a map thief named George Bland.  He would go into libraries to examine rare books and rare maps.  Using a razor blade, he would deftly cut out the maps, roll them up under his clothes and abscond with them, to sell them on the black map market.  Bland was a "chameleon" who adopted several different identities and abandoned more than one family during his multi-year crime spree in which he stole maps worth a cumulative half a million dollars.

An unusual kind of crime, no doubt, and not particularly egregious when compared to other sorts of crimes.  Still, a bibliophile such as myself might feel some anger toward the way he casually and irreversibly damaged numerous antique books for money.  I would also say he is a colossal jerk for the way he left families behind for monetary gain.

The best thing about this book is that it gives insight into a sub-culture of which I was completely unaware and which I found quite interesting:  the world of map collectors.  As one reviewer said, "But he offers dry wit and a fine sense of the dark places in our contemporary landscape, and he successfully captures both the story of Bland's bizarre 'map crime spree' and the underexamined history and politics of contemporary cartography."

I had never even before given any thought to "the history and politics of contemporary cartography," and learning about it was...yeah, I guess I can say, fascinating.