Book talk: David Howard, author of Lost Rights: The Misadventures of a Lost American Relic
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Time: 12:00 PM-1:00 PM,  FREE, Space is limited.
Place: Library of Virginia, Lecture Hall

In 1865, an unknown infantryman rifled through the North Carolina Statehouse, hunting for Confederate mementos--but what he found was no ordinary souvenir. He returned home with a touchstone of our Republic: one of the fourteen original copies of the Bill of Rights.
Lost Rights follows that document's epic passage over the course of 138 years, from the Indiana businessman who purchases the looted parchment for five dollars to the antiques dealer who tries to peddle it more than a century later for $5 million. The parchment drifts from the living-room wall of a middle-class Midwestern family into the corruptible world of high-end antiquities before its journey ends with a dramatic FBI sting on the 32nd floor of a Philadelphia office tower. Part history, part detective story, part true-crime yarn, Lost Rights is a page-turner populated by unforgettable characters--the outrageous New England antique-furniture dealer, the real estate magnate seeking his next financial conquest, the folk-art expert who stows the iconic document under his bed, and the little-known historian who divines the parchment's most important secret from a faded, barely legible, 200-year-old notation, among many others.

The Library of Virginia is located at 800 East Broad Street in Richmond, Virginia. The Library offers limited free parking to patrons using the building during operating hours. See the Library's visitor guide page for additional details: http://www.lva.virginia.gov/about/visit.asp

______________________________________
To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at
http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html