from Hacker News

A Controversial Rare-Book Dealer Tries to Rewrite His Own Ending

by acabal on 10/22/24, 3:20 AM with 34 comments

  • by brg on 10/22/24, 5:15 AM

  • by a1o on 10/22/24, 9:00 AM

    This magazine shows a pop that makes Safari ignore the gesture to go back, can't scroll up to go back to the address bar. For people using Safari on iPhone, is there any secret gesture to kill a tab like this?

  • by blantonl on 10/22/24, 2:39 PM

    Just enough admiration by the author to make someone think they should be like this guy, and approaching life like him is appropriate.

    Walking away after reading that article, I don't know whether or not to be appalled, or intrigued by the intricacies of the book collecting world and this dude.

    One thing is for certain, if someone owed me six figures and they just hand waved it away with a slight of hand, I'd start throwing some chairs.

  • by hristov on 10/22/24, 4:22 PM

    What a scumbag. Make sure to read to the end of the article to read about things that he undoubtedly stole. Good job by the New Yorker journalist getting to the bottom of things and not being charmed by this psychopath. Very good article overall.

    It is very depressing to see large public and non profit institutions be snowed in by his showmanship and spending millions of their funds on this glorified celebrity worship. It is good for museums to have letters of famous writers and their notes and such but it is an absolute waste for them to pay millions when they can pay hundreds of thousands. For most of these archives it seems that most and all bidders would be public or non profit institutions. Why would they outbid each other to waste more public or non profit money? In many cases it seems like there was no competitive bidding at all, horowitz merely came in with a crazy high price and they agreed to it. If they had a bit of a back bone they could have done the deals for much less.

    But it was quite hilarious to read how he convinced other thieves to buy his overpriced collections. I can imagine his sales pitch “you will be so respected if you become an antique books and manuscripts collector! You will be the cream of society. They will forget about your business dealings.”

  • by fergie on 10/22/24, 1:56 PM

    A well written article, but it could probably have been like 10% of the length.

  • by tptacek on 10/22/24, 4:43 AM

    "Keenly attuned to his guests’ networks and net worths" is a cute turn of phrase.

    Watch out for this story, it'll suck you in.

  • by parkcedar on 10/22/24, 5:12 AM