American Animals
A True Crime Memoir
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
AS SEEN IN THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE
“One of the most esoteric and far-fetched crimes in 21st-century annals.”
—The Hollywood Reporter
“A rare book heist that Danny Ocean may have applauded—except for one mistake.”
—Vanity Fair
“A tragicomedy of errors.”
—Salon
“They are the young people, the people with the idealism, the passion, the courage to do something interesting with their lives: an act of daring almost artistic in its originality. They are almost right.”
—The Guardian
“One of the biggest art heists in FBI history.”
—The Times of London
American Animals is a coming-of-age crime memoir centered around three childhood friends: Warren, Spencer, and Eric. Disillusioned with freshman year of college and determined to escape from their mundane Middle-American existences, the three hatch a plan to steal millions of dollars’ worth of artwork and rare manuscripts from a university museum. The story that unfolds is a gripping adventure of teenage rebellion, from page-turning meetings with black-market art dealers in Amsterdam to the opulent galleries of Christie’s auction house in Rockefeller Center. American Animals ushers the reader along a gut-wrenching ride of adolescent self-destruction. Providing a front-row seat to the inception, planning, and execution of the heist while offering a rare glimpse into the evolution of a crime—all narrated by one of the perpetrators in a darkly comic, action-packed, true-crime caper.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As a child, Borsuk wanted to be an FBI agent. He wound up becoming a criminal instead, as shown in this diverting novelistic memoir. One day in 2004 at Kentucky's Transylvania University, Warren, a childhood friend of Borsuk who's an avid birder and, like Borsuk, into drugs, persuades Borsuk to join him and another drug-using friend, Spencer, in stealing Audubon's multivolume Birds of America and some other rarities from the university's rare book room. Warren says he has a dealer in Amsterdam willing to pay $10 million for the Audubon set. The three teens bail on their first attempt, which includes laughable disguises, but on the second try, sans disguises, they tase the librarian, grab the oversized volumes, and stuff some rare prints into their backpacks. When they're spotted fleeing, they drop the large Audubon books and hightail it. They later take the prints to Christie's in New York City for an appraisal, but that deal is aborted after Spencer foolishly leaves his real cell phone number with a Christie's representative. More drug-fueled crimes car surfing and shoplifting ensue before federal agents burst into their house, arrest the boys, and reclaim the artwork from a marijuana-filled basement. That's where the book ends, but later they each spent seven years in prison. Borsuk smoothly combines humor with the ennui of being a truly lost boy. This is a must for fans of the 2018 movie of the same name based on this story.
