Though fearful current employees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art can only express themselves sotto voce about Rogues’ Gallery, ex-executives are not so willing to be gagged. “The book is completely fascinating; lucidly and engagingly written,” says Stuart Silver, for many years the museum’s chief exhibition designer. “Your notion that the history of the Met has been a kind of alchemical process, an alembic converting private dross to public gold is apt and insightful. One might say the same for what you accomplished, turning almost 140 years of information into a marvelously readable volume.”