A review by jl27
The Art Thief by Michael Finkel

4.0

It took me a while to finish this one, because I got bored with reading the psychologist interviews and such about a third of the way through. But I skimmed some of that, picked it back up last weekend, and the rest of the story was very fast-paced.

As an art teacher and someone who spent countless hours studying art history for undergrad, I finished this book really feeling heavy about the magnitude of these thefts, both in number of pieces and priceless nature of some of the works. The way this human regarded art that he cared about was narcissistic and horrifying. Equally horrifying is how his fixation affected and eventually destroyed his personal relationships.