The Birds of America is a book by naturalist and painter John James Audubon, containing illustrations of a wide variety of birds of the United States. It was first published as a series in sections between 1827 and 1838, in Edinburgh and London. Not all of the specimens collected in the work were collected by Audubon himself, some were sent to him by john Kirk Townsend who had collected them on Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth’s 1834 expedition with Thomas Nuttall.
The first edition of the book was printed about 140 sets, most of them collected by foreign libraries and museums,11 sets are owned by private collectors. In Asia, only one set is collected at Meisei University. In Australia there is another set collected by the Melbourne Public Library, but a few pages are missing.
American Animals is a 2018 crime drama film written and directed by Bart Layton. The film is based on the true story of a library heist that happened at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky in 2004.
Movie summary:
In December 2004, in the midst of final exams, four young men robbed Original Copy of Birds of American in the rare-book room at the library of Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky.
