Delighted to have Joshua Hammer back with us at the p p and josh was here first last book about four years ago. Host that would of course was a bad librarian, timbuktu. And it told the riveting story of how an argument in timbuktu and manage with a very brave helper, this mobile more than three or 50000 historical manuscripts out from under militants to safety about 600 miles away. The book was a bestseller and establish josh, as someone for night for some really truly great stories. Any student again with his new book, the falcon thief which recounts another true and gripping tale of adventure and this one about wildlife. Josh is a journalist by trade and other pretty adventurous globetrotting run himself. He was working for newsweek over nearly two decades. He joined newsweek in the late 1980s as a Business Media writer, and within a few years he was off the cover the rest of the world on postings that make him in, nairobi, berlin, jerusalem, cape town and back here in the u. S. In los angeles. And for the past decade and a half, is continue to report and travel widely. Writing for of range of publications printed four years ago he won the National Magazine award and reporting where titled minors asserted and i dont know if im already infected. [laughter]. It was still priced winning story. And it told the story of a physician in sierra leone, and the effort to control the ebola right there. In addition to the timbuktu book, josh has written otherkt books, one about his younger brother who became a religious fundamentalist and another valve seat for 2002 of the church of nativity in bethlehem, and a story with 1923 earthquake and fire struck japan. It is been said of josh that he reports like a journalist and writes like a novelist. And that certainly the case with his work in the falcon thief. And in notorious wildlife smuggler who for years traveled the store looking for highly valued exit through the ferry and selling them. The acids for a falcons another rafters are used for support. The other essential. Joshs story is a detective from the National Wildlifeal crime ut named Andy Mcwilliams the specializes in crime solving and was determined to catch him. In the book is a thrilling fastpaced chronicle but it is more than that. It is more than just a detective story set in a rare world with unusual characters and standing birds. It is, as one reviewer noted, Cautionary Tales about how the love of nature and god or can go very wrong and what happens with precious wildlife because of the status symbol on the planet is increasingly in peril. And ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming joshua a hammer. [applause]. Joshua thank you for that great detailed introduction. I am humbled. This will always be my favorite bookstore in venue to talkor abt these things. So thank you everybody for coming out. Im amazed that anybody goes to book events at all. [laughter]. So okay, is recorded. [laughter]. Butuy anyway, flexible i have or the course of doing this particular talk now, three or four times since i got to new york, is to basically present the narrative without giving away the entire both in illustrating that narrative with pictures that i think help bring the story to life read unable very quickly start with an introduction about how, because i assume most of you have not yet seen the book so how to basically answer the question of how i stumbled into the same three vast library thinking that in 2016, and that is the story that i have treatment, followed for many years beginning for newsweek, i had made a couple of trips to mali and was to timbuktu and i continued to visit over the years and got a couple of smithsonian assignments to write about the great manuscripts of timbuktu so i was pretty well versed in that story when the al qaeda invaded the country people actually knew got caught up in the violence in the capturing of the entire two thirds of the country. So if Something Like a story that i ownedha felton away and made a certain amount of sense that the book would come out of it. This is something completely different. It was a solid like an act of desperation. Because i was looking for another project andas i had thrn out some just terrible ideas including one about the 1969 mess well i dont even want to go into them. [laughter]. But fortunately, in 2017, i was in living with my kids and it is happened to pick up the london times. I was just sitting in a cafe reading, there was a very short article about page 12 or so, about this character name jeffrey lindgren. And it was like terrible thief on the wing again. They love those terrible puns. All they said he was a notorious thief are known for teleconference repelling down clips to reach their falcon eggs and sell to shakes in dubai read they had vanished or sent to prison in brazil and had disappeared. And now the world of captivation world burgers around the world and Wildlife Police were alarmed that he might be coming back on hunt. It was sort of enough to ignite my interest investigating it further and becoming obsessed with landrum in a as he was about his eggs. I think it was sort of phonorecord us, or journalist, nonfiction just plunging deeper and deeper into a subject. And so with that introduction, i will tell you a bit about the story as it unfolds in the book to try to give you this coherene without giving too much weight. The story against in shower room and efforts First Business class lounge. This was in Birmingham National airport in the uk. Where a very vigilant janitor notices middleaged white fellow nondescript character going into a washroom of the with all of his baggage. And disappears in there for 20 minutes. In the janitor is waiting to clean theit place. He doesnt know what is going on he had job security monitor looking at the close captioning of tvs in the shopping mall. But he was trained to observe. After 20 minutes, the sky comes out in the gender goes inside of the bathroom and shower bases absolutely nothing has been touched. Everything was completely dry, shower unused in towels still floated in trent printed so he immediately is suspicious and starts venting around. And underneath towels he finds a diaper. E opens it up in a season and cart at the bottom of the diaper bag with a single red painted red egg. Like an easter egg inside of it. Which he figures was left by the guy who was just in there so is completely mystified and some what alarmed. What could this possibly be. He think it probably has something to do with drugs and is not sure. To make a n long story short, te Counterterrorism Police were blotted and they take him away. They stripsearched him and they find beneath his tshirt, his hospital gauze wrapped tightly around his bodysp and inside because our woolen socks. And inside of the woolen socks are 14 of these. They dont know what they are. These karen tears him police are not trained at all in understanding what they are. So they asked him jeffrey lindgren, but the point he knew his name. They look to his passport and establishes identity irish and national. He said what is these. And he tells them they are duck eggs. And they say okay. Would you mind telling us why you are carrying raw duck eggs attached to your body. Your belly. And he explains that his chiropractor, has told him that he needs to where raw eggs wrapped around his body because it will prevent him from stooping and lead to the of his lower back muscles. [laughter]. Okay. So at this point, they just dont know what they have in the hands. And at that point, they summoned the enemy phone call to Andy Mcwilliams. If any of you have seen the reviews of this book, and there been a fewew good ones. Theyre really satisfying to read but the tent to give short shrift to Andy Mcwilliams who i want to emphasize from the very beginning, this is a bad guy. You have here on antihero, and any mcwilliams was called in the world, certainly britainss mot famous Wildlife Policeman with a specialty in ornithological crimes. So heres the story, he realizes that this may be because of reading season, maybe incubating the nesting. And he realizes the sky is probably carrying these on his body to keep them warm not hiding them and he h instantly knows that they are, the peregrine falcons eggs. And actually had a better image of one but for some reason it didnt download. That is basically a highly protected bird, the fastest bird on the planet, travels and voyages to dive to kill another bird in midair and speeds of up to 180 miles per hour. Mcwilliams knows that they are highly prized by arab falconers in particular especially the wealthy shakes of the united arab world people. Please never actually known the caesar rumors. The black market to bring in these protected rafters into the emirate. And for these falconers but so here he believes just from the very description offered him by the counter and terrorism cops that he may have a smuggler on hiss hands. So mcwilliams drives down from liverpool where he is from an by the way, so this is out of order. This is him and a portrait of him in 2010. Adult thanthats what he lookedk then. So mcwilliams comes down and interviews the sky and he is still, lying and telling the same story that he was telling the police. A pretty quickly lets him know these not dealing with an idiot, its a i wild life expert, referent expert. He finally gets him to admit that yes he was stealing them and they were those eggs and that they were dead and in fact, it was only bringing them down to south africa for a private collection. That was the store he gave them. Mcwilliams was pretty sure he was lying. He also admitted that he had been to and retrieved these eggs from cliffs and whale rated this is picture of rhondda valley, one of the greatest attractions the peregrine falcons in the uk and possibly the world is found in this former coal mining area noted for itsoa cliffs, for the amazing landscape in these ledges that are sheltered from the wind. The howling winds at the trees, the rocket down decades and even surgery more about for coal mining to basically line this incredible network of coal mines that were built over the centuries as part of the uk. The barren landscape with these fierce winds these little rocky ledges here protected from the winds were the programs laid their eggs printed out really nasty. They dont create, they just find these ledges and may be put a few stones and pebbles around it to protect them from rolling off. You have to imagine, this vast landscape, huge wilderness area. And somehow he was able to have acquired 14 of these eggs. So mcwilliams is pretty sure the scott a professional on his hands. So this is a trip that i took a couple of years ago. And later, seven years later following the footsteps of them. And thats any mcwilliams who was as ihe said, and let me give you a quick background sketch of mcwilliams. Hes a liverpool pop, working class family grandfather, he was world war i, his father was a merchant marine and het grew up with really watches but the police. He did not have any barely finished school. But he became a cop, a liverpool cop, walking the breach, and became really quite will known as an investigator and sort of a midlife crisis in his 40s he decided he was tired of the drug busting drug addicts and drug pushers and suicides and murders pretty wanted to get away from that. He was also very talented rugby player, a fierce rugby player one of the best police rugby players. He had injuries then and he dropped out pretty and then he found bird watching and it led him into this kind of incident sort of subterranean world. A black market, bird traders and killers of falcons, pigeon fanciers, and he killed falcons or destroy their eggs because falcons by the moral into enemy of the pigeon. So exotic birds smugglers, actually put them inside a plastic tubes and set t them ona 24 hour horrific journey from thailand to the amazon to be okay. To satisfy the hunger of these rare bird fanatics. And also another odd little aspect of this is the good collectors. Since the british phenomenon. Middleclass art sorry middle aged men, spending time going off to some of the remote corners of the uk, islands and northern scotland. Wales, stealing eggs of rare birds. Protected birds. Blowing outut the areas in the mounting them in collections. If their own collections which you have to keep secret, the usually guide them in the radix and they got there in his spare time and stare at their eggs printed mcwilliams, found this whole subculture that involved and very few people knew it even existed and he ended up pursuing these guys, hundreds of them and almost singlehandedly driving this, operation called operation keister in the major on these guys and this is his background. And this is by the time that linda comes across him. He is well versed in almost as if as much about rare birds and protected birds as linden does. So i go here to and this is the market mcwilliams knew existed and that landrum suddenly presented a concrete image of. And this is a picture taken into my. So just quickly is been around for at least 3000 years and a lot of people believed it started in the arab world and it was started in the desert with the whole idea that you take these wild birds theres migration over the deserts and they would trap these birds and pull them out of the sky basically. And it would train them to hunt so they started out as hunters. Essentially there helping people put food in the tables pretty even before the arrival of islam. And then over thehe centuries, lets welcome really developed and traders brought it to china and brought it over the world in the became a sport and recreational thing more than it did in necessary way to feed yourself. But its essentially the sort of interaction, mystical interaction between man and bird which trained bird, maybe he had beat some of you have read the book but this became a know it spread around the world, did kind of die out in the uk and europe really never will be on a Certain Group of people. In the arab world became very closely identified with arab culture. Even though the desert is kind pretty much wide or seriously eroded over the course of the last 50 years of the discovery of oil, balconies remained embedded in the culture. This is another trainer and a dubai training ground. This the kind of passion that these wealthiest falconers would tend to be members of the royal family have. This the Veterinary Center for the shake to the crown princes in dubai. The crown prince, full, the son of mohammed who 7 billiondollar roller of divine essentially built this megalopolis pretty this is an intense, only the stateoftheart hospitals where they would staff veterinarians from all of the world and that they paid huge salaries due to take care of the birds. In the last 20 years as the desert has gotten smaller and initial prey of the birds has disappeared in the persian gulf in a new phenomenon called thought racing where the wealthy shakes take the birds and even though their natural tendency is to drop straight drop as i said up to 16 oh miles per hour, they now are trained using everything from the many airplanes and drones to handheld debate whatever to go vertical or horizontally and they gather that shakes gather up with these falcon racetracks. In the place bets. They have to go all over the world to find the greatest birds that will participate in these races. This is an obsession for these guys. So basically you have readers basically since the 70s. You cannot trade. Its very severe restrictions as far as the only kind of commercials im a the trading of these birds are taking ofas thee birds out of nest, only a handful are allowed every year. And its only for scientific research. If youre not part of thehe scientific research, your completely forbidden for touching these birds. So this hunger for these parts, theres a whole industry that is resident where they take them and they breed them an artificial environment and incubate the eggs. Its a huge trade worth millions of dollars. But the arabs, Certain Group of arabs, mostly these wealthy shake to believe that the redbirds, just cannot be compared to the wild ones the compound of the debts because Natural Selection has for these birds over the centuries. One of them was jeffrey. Here we go, so, i became very curious to find out as did Andy Mcwilliams to find out mcwilliam was able he figured out pretty quickly and had a global smuggler on his hands. That if he let him go he would escape and go back to doing this again so mcwilliam became 36 hours to try to persuade a prosecutor to hold landrum for basically carrying bird eggs on his body which he knew, prosecutors like those Counterterrorism Police had no clue about these arcane wildlife laws that he was breaking. It was down to the wire trying to persuade these people that this was the guy they wanted to hold, and egg smuggler, to hold without bail was a difficult sell but mcwilliam succeeded in doing it and was able to keep them without bail while he began digging into his story. As i did when i found my way to jeffreys life. How does one become an egg smuggler . How does one become an egg thief . What led him to be arab world . Is such a sweet case that it does raise the question of what in that background would have created this commerce that he engaged in . He grew up in the second city that was then rhodesia and grub basically his father was a thirdgeneration white african. Parents had originally came from ireland. He grew up within shouting difference distance of this park called [inaudible] park in rhodesia which is this magnificent geological phenomenon that has the is amazing rock structures and some of which rise thousands of feet and then this thick vegetation that makes them absolutely perfect for raptors. This park has the greatest concentration of eagles mohawks and falcons on the planet. His backyard. Ally he became involved with his father in the, born in 61 so in the late 70s he became involved in a survey on ornithological survey called this black eagle bird which is one of the strongest eagles in the world and which is found in huge concentrations at this park pretty much nowhere else in the world. This became jeffrey and his father went to the field and surveyed spent months just observing the nest and this is where he learned to climb trees and to repel them cliffs and this is a scene of people, this is the black eagle survey continues even now, 50 years later. There are people looking at the black eagle and they lay their eggs like the falcons do high up, 8000200 feet off the ground t d difficult to spot their nests. This is how he grew up, getting