Welcome to our November 2024 Book Club selection: The Art Thief by Michael Finkel. We will discuss it on our November Book Club Chat on Tuesday, November 26th, at 8 pm EST. ⁠ The chats will run for about 60 minutes and be hosted by Regina Garay and Cindy Howard.

INFO ON THE BOOK SELECTION

For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion. In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, Breitwieser never stole for money. Instead, he displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart’s content. Possessed of remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to circumvent practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtaking number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend’s pleas to stop—until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down. This is a riveting story of art, crime, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.

INFO ON THE AUTHOR

Michael Finkel is an author and journalist. He wrote for Sports Illustrated and traveled widely for National Geographic Adventure—crossing the Sahara desert with migrant workers and documenting the impact of animal poachers in Central Africa. After being fired from the New York Times for a journalism snafu, he began a correspondence with a murderer who had assumed his identity - this story led to his first best-selling book. He now lives with his family in northern Utah.