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"The Man Who Loved Books Too Much" (Encore presentation.)

By Rich Fisher

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kwgs/local-kwgs-890804.mp3

Tulsa, Oklahoma – (Please note: This show originally aired in September of 2009.) If you know this program, you probably also know how much we love books here at StudioTulsa (and you might well be a big-time book-lover yourself). On this edition of our show, we speak with the Bay Area-based journalist and writer Allsion Hoover Bartlett, whose new book is "The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession." The thief at the heart of this book --- a man named John Gilkey, who's both seriously obsessed and entirely unrepentant --- was originally profiled by Bartlett in a piece that appeared in The Best American Crime Writing 2007. In this volume, Bartlett mixes suspense, humor, insight, and high-octane literary smarts in order to flesh-out the story of John Gilkey, and to also tell the story of Gilkey's indefatigable pursuer, a rare-book dealer and self-styled biblio-investigator named Ken Sanders. As Library Journal has noted, this "excellent tale of people's intimate, complex, and sometimes dangerous relationships to books will be relished by readers, writers, and collectors who are passionate about books as well as fans of true crime stories."