Bowie At 75 - Martin Popoff (Motor Books)

An innovator. A disrupter. An influencer who was actually influential, not only in his era, but for generations of musicians who followed and those still to come.  The impact that David Bowie had went far beyond just music - his influence could be felt in fashion and culture.

Bowie’s enigmatic personality shifted  the cultural landscape long before the dime a dozen social media creations who lay claim to fame simply by alleging themselves to be famous. In short, Bowie was more than just a rock star.

Prolific music writer and curator Martin Popoff compiled the lavishly illustrated, Bowie at 75, which chronicles with words and pictures the span of Bowie’s career. Popoff delves deeply into Bowie’s ever changing personas.

Housed in a heavy duty slip cover, this epic collection explores the twists and turns from the Thin White Duke to Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders and the ultra-successful Let’s Dance album.

Along the way, Popoff checks off the list of players, producers and bands that came under Bowie’s influence. The parades includes legendary figures like: Iggy Pop, Mott the Hoople, Robert Fripp, Steveie Ray Vaughan, Nile Rodgers, Mick Ronson and Adrian Belew to name just a few.

Bowie’s collaborations also included hits with Mick Jagger & Tina Turner, Lou Reef, and Queen. Bowie ar 75, provides an amazing cornerstone addition for any Bowie collection.

Michael Finkel - The Art Thief - A True Story of Love, Crime and Dangerous Obsession (Knopf)

Author Michael Finkel is a skilled practitioner of the dying art of long form journalism. In this age of short attention spans that demand stories be told in easily digestible, bite sized chunks, Finkel stands apart from the crowd by immersing not only himself, but also the reader. That goes for not only the stories he tells, but also the detailed characters that populate his stories.

Finkel’s checkered past a very public kerfuffle with his former employer, the New York Time Magazine. While writing about the slave trade in war torn West Africa, it was discovered that Finkel’s sympathetic profile of a young man caught up in the trade, turned out to be a composite character, culled from a number of people that he interviewed while in the strife ridden region. While the action was journalistically suspect, it fits with Finkel’s style of character driven storytelling.

For his latest outing,  The Art Thief - A True Story of Love, Crime and Dangerous 

Obsession, Finkel delves into the tale of an obsessive, daring and at times reckless criminal named Stephene Breitweiser, who racked up an astonishing haul of stolen art that has been estimated to have a collective value of $1.4 billion. Finkel chronicles not only Breitweiser’s heists, which at times occurred at a blistering pace, multiple times per month, but also the obsessive, manic nature of his compulsive need to add to his collection. 

Unlike most art thieves, Breitweiser wasn't in it for pure financial gain, but to add to his personal collection. Hardly the criminal mastermind, Breitwiser wasn’t trying to fill the walls of palatial estate, but rather his attic bedroom in his mother’s house. Yes, one of the most prolific art thieves in history was a bit of a slacker who sponged off of his mother while secreting his ill-gotten art in his locked attic lair.

Finkel details Breitweiser’s crimes in stunning detail. Those crimes were unlike any art crimes popularized in movies or books that featured detail planning of ways to circumvent elaborate security measures or blunt force robberies. Unlike say The Thomas Crown Affair, Breitweiser’s criminal enterprises were perpetrated in what amounts to the spur of the moment; fearless, daring, and armed with nothing more than a Swiss Army Knife and his girlfriend/sidekick Anne-Catherine. 

Finkel’s strong suit is delving deeply into the settings of these crimes, and painting a clear picture of the locales and the flaws of his characters. It becomes clear that Breirweiser’s downfall lands squarely at the feet of his obsessions; first with the art he desired and a close second was Anne-Catherine, who Finkel draws as a modern day, desirable, femme fatale. Finkel’s skill lies in his ability to draw you into those flawed characters and leave you wondering what’s next for the subjects he puts under his microscope.