Russell Martin

PREFACEI did not grow up wanting to be an astronaut. In those years there were no astronauts in Indiana, nor anywhere else for that matter. But there were real adventurers to read aboutexplorers, cowboys, race-car driversand I often longed to follow in the footsteps of Daniel Boone, Roy Rogers, or...

PRELUDE Beethoven's hair, sheltered for nearly two centuries inside a glass locket, was about to become the subject of rapt attention on a warm December morning in 1995. The two men principally involved in its purchase—^Brooklyn-born Ira Brilliant, a retired Phoenix real estate developer, and...