American Animals

January 27, 2020
As a child, Borsuk wanted to be an FBI agent. He wound up becoming a criminal instead, as shown in this diverting novelistic memoir. One day in 2004 at Kentucky’s Transylvania University, Warren, a childhood friend of Borsuk who’s an avid birder and, like Borsuk, into drugs, persuades Borsuk to join him and another drug-using friend, Spencer, in stealing Audubon’s multivolume Birds of America and some other rarities from the university’s rare book room. Warren says he has a dealer in Amsterdam willing to pay $10 million for the Audubon set. The three teens bail on their first attempt, which includes laughable disguises, but on the second try, sans disguises, they tase the librarian, grab the oversized volumes, and stuff some rare prints into their backpacks. When they’re spotted fleeing, they drop the large Audubon books and hightail it. They later take the prints to Christie’s in New York City for an appraisal, but that deal is aborted after Spencer foolishly leaves his real cell phone number with a Christie’s representative. More drug-fueled crimes—car surfing and shoplifting—ensue before federal agents burst into their house, arrest the boys, and reclaim the artwork from a marijuana-filled basement. That’s where the book ends, but later they each spent seven years in prison. Borsuk smoothly combines humor with the ennui of being a truly lost boy. This is a must for fans of the 2018 movie of the same name based on this story.