In The Hunt for History: On the Trail of the World's Lost Treasures--from the Letters of Lincoln, Churchill, and Einstein to the Secret Recordings Onboard JFK's Air Force One, rare documents dealer Nathan Raab tells spellbinding stories of tracking down and identifying rare historical documents and artifacts. He includes the announcement of Napoleon's death from a British admiral stationed on St. Helena, an outraged letter from Susan B. Anthony to a clueless autograph dealer and, yes, previously unknown recordings made on Air Force One on November 22, 1963. (He also shares heartbreaking moments of telling someone their family treasure is neither valuable nor authentic.)
Despite its title, The Hunt for History is more than a series of treasure hunts. Writing in a light, conversational style, Raab uses these accounts to illustrate both his education as a documents dealer and his growing fascination with history. Working alongside his father, he learns to authenticate documents, to identify forgeries and to recognize whether an authentic document has the historical significance of a major find. At the same time, he comes to understand how a piece of the past can provide an attachment to history. That understanding becomes deeply personal in the penultimate chapter of the book, in which Raab describes a historical discovery that changed him--the letters and library of a Jewish scientist smuggled out of Germany prior to World War II.
The Hunt for History is a delightful account of one man's engagement with the past. --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins