Finders Keepers A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession [Paperback]

To whom does the past belong? Is the archeologist who discovers a lost tomb a sort of hero--or a villain? If someone steals a relic from a museum and returns it to the ruin it came from, is she a thief? Written in his trademark lyrical style, Craig Childs's riveting new book is a ghost story--an intense, impassioned investigation into the nature of the past and the things we leave behind. We visit lonesome desert canyons and fancy Fifth Avenue art galleries, journey throughout the Americas, Asia, the past and the present. The result is a brilliant book about man and nature, remnants and memory, a dashing tale of crime and detection.Craig Childs--naturalist, adventurer, desert ecologist, and frequent contributor to National Public Radio's Morning Edition--lives in Crawford, Colorado. His previous books includeThe Animal Dialogues,House of Rain,The Way Out,The Secret Knowledge of Water,andSoul of Nowhere. Craig Childs understands [archeological] epiphanies, and he beautifully captures them...along with the moral ambiguities that come from exposing a long-hidden world. George Johnson,New York Times Book Review [Childs is] a desert ecologist who also happens to be a fine storyteller...[Finders Keepersis] a fascinating book, full of swashbuckling pothunters, FBI raids, greasy museum curators who don't really care and many, many other characters...Childs looks at moral issues from varied angles. He doubts others as he doubts himself, a beautiful inverse of the golden rule. Susan Salter Reynolds,Los Angeles Times Reads almost like a thriller, chock-full of vendettas, suicides and large scale criminal enterprises dedicated to the multimillion-dollar trade in antiques. NPR, Weekend Alls"