Iven Hale reviews Rachel Schteir's "The Steal: a cultural history of shop-lifting". Schteir considers theivery across the ages, but especially in the modern era and in terms of sureptitiously lifting goods from stores and vendors. Iven remarks on the social forces that compel people to shop-lift, and which also shield some but not others from punishment, but also how criminologists explain shop-lifting in terms of pathology.