Antique Picking Reading List

Looking for something entertaining to read about searching for antiques and collectibles?  Here are a few of my favorite reads in this area.  I've included fiction and non-fiction (but no reference books or how-to books).

• Cadillac Jack by Larry McMurtry (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove).   The protagonist is an antique picker who drives around the country in a big pearl colored Cadillac buying and selling antiques.  The descriptions of the small town auctions and flea markets he attends ring true.  This book also captures the On The Road aspect of antique picking.  Plus, it contains the classic line:  "'Anything can be anywhere...'"
  
  
• Loot:The Battle Over The Stolen Treasures Of The Ancient World by Sharon Waxman.  Thought provoking book about the battle for return of looted treasures from the Ancient World.
  
  
• The Lost Chalice:The Epic Hunt For A Priceless Masterpiece by Vernon Silver.  Fascinating tale of the history of the Euphronias krater, an ancient Etruscan artifact whose discovery and sale caused scandal in the antiquities world.
  
  
• Old Masters, New World :America's Raid On Europe's Great Pictures, 1880-World War I by Cynthia Saltzman.  Non fiction book written by a journalist about late Victorian American industrialists purchasing masterpiece paintings out of Europe's great collections.  Many of those paintings have made their ways into important American museum collections.
  
  
• Rogues' Gallery: The Secret Story of the Lust, Lies, Greed, and Betrayals That Made the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Michael Gross.  This is a tell all non-fiction work about New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.   Gross traces the Museum's history from its beginnings in the Victorian era, through the looting scandals of the late 20th century, to present.
   
• The Swerve: How The World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt.  This is a non-fiction work describing how the discovery of an ancient Roman manuscript On The Nature Of Things by Lucretius, changed the course of human thought.  The description of the medieval book hunters and the hunt for classical manuscripts is engrossing for antique scouts today.
  
  
• White Oleander by Janet Fitch.  Oprah Winfrey selected this book for her popular book club.  It is a coming of age story about a teenage girl bounced around through several households in Los Angeles.  One of the households is run by a woman who requires her young charges to buy and sell used items at swap meets and flea markets.  It contains surprisingly true to life descriptions of the Los Angeles swap meet scene.