The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts

**New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice**

To save ancient Arabic texts from Al Qaeda, a band of librarians pulls off a brazen heist worthy of Ocean’s Eleven in this “fast-paced narrative that is…part intellectual history, part geopolitical tract, and part out-and-out thriller” (The Washington Post) from the award-winning journalist and author of The Falcon Thief.

In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara De...