Vendor
	Foundry Claire Harris
Original language
English
Categories
Politics & government

SAVING ITALY

Robert M. Edsel

The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis

The follow up to Robert Edsel’s THE MONUMENTS MEN, soon to be a motion picture directed by and starring George Clooney

The author of The Monuments Men tells the blockbuster story of Allied heroes, Nazi thieves, and the race to save Italy’s art treasures.

When the Allies invaded Italy in World War II, the Nazi’s were in the process of stealing over $500 million in art masterpieces (worth more than $6 trillion today), including works by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Caravaggio, and many others. Robert Edsel, who first introduced readers to the Monuments Men, the team who protected the Europe’s treasures during WWII, now tells the astonishing story of the Italian invasion, in which the Nazi’s bombed the historic bridges of Florence and Allied air raids nearly destroyed Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” and Michelangelo’s “David”. Following two heroic American art scholars and an SS General who ransomed the stolen art while attempting a secret German surrender, Edsel’s hair-raising adventure follows the American army from Naples and Rome to Pisa and Florence in pursuit of the priceless masterpieces. A blockbuster story of gripping suspense, Saving Italy will appeal to lovers of history, war, art, and adventure. Author of The Monuments Men, Robert Edsel is founder and president of the Monuments Men Foundation, a recipient of the National Humanities Medal, and a trustee at the National World War II Museum. He lives in Dallas.”

Available products
Book Published 2013-06-01 by Norton
Book Published 2013-06-01 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. - New York (USA)

Comments

Edsel’s knowledge and appreciation of art amplifies this celebration of the unheralded group of men who ensured the safety of Italy’s greatest treasures.

Edsel’s recovery of the history of the Monuments Men makes for a remarkable and fascinating story. As more recent conflicts have shown, the havoc that war can wreak upon our artistic heritage has unfortunately not diminished and there are important lessons in this book for policy makers and all who care about the preservation of the world’s artistic legacy for future generations.

Article on how the author got started on his book. Read more...

Wars routinely destroy not just lives but cultural treasures. Yet Robert M. Edsel keeps demonstrating that, for all its horrors and destruction, World War II included unprecedented efforts to preserve Europe’s artistic masterpieces as the Allies retook the continent.... Edsel’s larger point in this and his previous book — and through the work of his Monuments Men Foundation — is that the achievements of both men and their colleagues should be “a source of pride for all Americans.” Read more...

As Robert Edsel shows us in this valuable book, the artistic patrimony of the western world was a hostage to Hitler’s legions in 1945. SAVING ITALY rescues an unlikely troop of American heroes from obscurity, chronicling the exploits of a band of art professors working for the U.S. military as they saved Tuscany’s masterworks, museums and cathedrals from oblivion as Nazi Germany’s southern flank crumbled.

Article: Cultural Casualties of War: The forces that tore Europe apart during World War II also coveted its artistic heritage. Read more...

Edsel is judicious and even-handed in his assessment of the Nazi record in relation to Italian art treasures and his estimation of the enduringly controversial Karl Wolff, the SS general who negotiated the German surrender with CIA chief Allen Dulles. Read more...

Robert Edsel has written a captivating, and at times hair-raising, book on the audacious Allied effort during World War II to save the priceless art treasurers in Italy. It is impossible to imagine what Western civilization would be today without these cultural masterpieces. Edsel has written a gripping, heroic story of the Monuments Men who saved them from certain destruction.

Fascinating, fast-paced story, and military and art historians, as well as fans of adventurous nonfiction, will appreciate this well-written and informative reminder that war threatens not only the generations who fight it, but also the artistic triumphs of those who came before.

Saving Italy has debuted at #14!

SAVING ITALY is an astonishing account of a little known American effort to save Italy’s vast store of priceless monuments and art during World War II. While American warriors were fighting the length of the country, other Americans were courageously working alongside to preserve the irreplaceable best of Italy’s culture. Read it and be proud of those who were on their own front lines of a cruel war.

An amazing story, superbly told. The narrative and research are exceptionally well done. What the Germans did, not only in Italy, but throughout Europe, was monstrous and Edsel has done a great service not only to tell the story of the Monuments Men and the work that they did in Italy, but also to remind mankind what the Germans did. I believe that Saving Italy is a major contribution to the history of World War II.

Eventually the deranged plots of the Nazis called forth a new breed of adversary, their college degrees in art and antiquities hardly imposing yet suddenly critical, their extraordinary confrontation with evil quickly proving capable, in this inspired account, of recasting the war in Italy into a barn-burner of a history.

Article about Robert Edsel and the Monuments Men Foundation Read more...

It is incredible [amazing] that so much of Italy’s timeless art survived the sordidness of World War Two. Robert Edsel has written a poignant, fascinating story, bringing to life the heroic soldier-scholars who saved Italy’s treasures.