Recension : « le voleur de cartes » par Michael Blanding - WSJ
▻http://online.wsj.com/articles/book-review-the-map-thief-by-michael-blanding-1405291313
’This is Forbes Smiley, from the Vineyard." Would that all criminals introduced themselves with such genteel address. But then, E. Forbes Smiley III, with his classical education, third-generation suffix and “rich, nasally” accent, is hardly an ordinary felon. In “The Map Thief,” Michael Blanding intersperses the tale of Smiley’s theft of nearly 100 maps between 2002 and 2005 with the histories of mapmaking and of the pioneering works that Smiley coolly pilfered.
Smiley’s childhood in Bedford, N.H., was, by his own reckoning, “idyllic.” He thrived in the close-knit town and at the “experimental” high school that his parents had helped to found. In 1974, he left for Hampshire College, where he drove an old Checker cab and made dollhouse furniture for extra cash. Not surprisingly, Smiley’s unusual interests led him to an unconventional career. Soon after graduating, he moved to New York and apprenticed in the rare-book and map division at B. Altman, the stately Fifth Avenue department store. In 1984, he struck out on his own, at age 28.