The Styrofoam Mummy

Teeming with fakers and forgers, tomb raiders and con artists, the world of antiquities trading is a strange and fascinating place. I’ve spent years digging through secret archives, reading court documents, and interviewing insiders to bring you six stories of audacious antiquities crimes – some of them still unspooling – in The Styrofoam Mummy: Tales from the Dark Side of the Antiquities Market. The dealers and smugglers run from Peru to Fifth Avenue, while the artifacts include both looted masterpieces and ludicrous fakes: Chinese “chicken cups,” Roman keychains, even pieces of old sandals billed as Biblical relics... along with a supposedly mummified and yet somehow still erect phallus. The book reveals the outlandish lengths fraudsters go to secure wealth and status, makes clear the real cost of their actions, and demonstrates the failure of every legal safeguard meant to protect both the living and the dead. Coming July 6, 2027! Preorder from Amazon, Bookshop.org or your favorite independent bookstore.

Art Heist

A fun, illustrated guide to the true stories behind the world’s most daring art heists - as well as the fate of art during conflict and the theft and repatriation of sacred artifacts. Kirkus calls it “an intriguing glimpse at the underbelly of the art world.” For kids, teens, and any adults who love a good tale!

Preorder through MacMillan, Amazon, Bookshop.org or your favorite independent bookstore.

Smashing Statues

Why do we care so much about statues? Who gets to decide which ones should stay up and which should come down? I trace the turbulent history of American monuments and its abundant ironies, starting with the enslaved man who helped make the statue of Freedom atop the US Capitol, and explore the surprising motivations behind such contemporary flashpoints as the toppling of a statue of Columbus at the Minnesota State Capitol. Combining gripping narratives with legal, political, and historical analysis, the book aims to give readers the context they need to consider the fundamental question: whose voices must be heard and whose pain must remain private?

Available through Norton, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org or your favorite independent bookstore.

Check out my interviews on monuments in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Today Show.

Possession

Enlivened by fascinating personalities and scandalous events, Possession shows how collecting antiquities has been a way of creating identity, informed by a desire to annex the past while providing an illicit thrill along the way. Thompson's accounts of history's most infamous collectors—from the Roman Emperor Tiberius, who stole a life-sized nude Greek statue for his bedroom, to Queen Christina of Sweden, who habitually pilfered small antiquities from her fellow aristocrats, to Sir William Hamilton, who forced his mistress to enact poses from his collection of Greek vases—are as mesmerizing as they are revealing.

Named an NPR Best Book of 2016.

“Riveting... fascinating... treasure trove of a book... absorbing and bizarre.”—Wall Street Journal

“This slim volume is just bursting with read-them-to-a-friend anecdotes of collectors who’d stop at nothing. . . . Art is passion; Thompson understands. . . . The marvelous Possession offers a savvy history of passion as politics, a delightful collection of collectors and a love of art that might just send you to a museum.”—NPR

“Timely and immensely enjoyable; . . . a cavalcade of history’s most ardent lovers of the antique. . . . Thompson’s brilliantly told tales create a sparkling tableau that invites further reflection on the politics of even the most solipsistic collectors.”— The Atlantic