Download or read book The Monuments Men written by Robert M. Edsel and published by Center Street. This book was released on 2009-09-03 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book that serves as the basis for the acclaimed George Clooney major motion picture, The Monuments Men. At the same time Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the western world, his armies were methodically seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe. The Fuhrer had begun cataloguing the art he planned to collect as well as the art he would destroy: "degenerate" works he despised. In a race against time, behind enemy lines, often unarmed, a special force of American and British museum directors, curators, art historians, and others, called the Monuments Men, risked their lives scouring Europe to prevent the destruction of thousands of years of culture. Focusing on the eleven-month period between D-Day and V-E Day, this fascinating account follows six Monuments Men and their impossible mission to save the world's great art from the Nazis.
Download or read book Monuments Man written by James J. Rorimer and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic now back in print and enriched with new imagery, James J. Rorimer’s riveting first-hand account takes readers on a treasure hunt as he follows the Allied troops across France and Germany to save Nazi-stolen masterpieces of art. James J. Rorimer, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, became a leading figure in the art recovery unit known as the Monuments Men, an elite group imbedded in the US Army, who risked their lives during World War II to save Europe’s greatest artworks from Hitler’s grasp. In the film Monuments Men, Matt Damon’s character is based on Rorimer as he embarks on the world’s most dangerous real-life hunt for stolen artworks with the goal of locating, seizing, and returning the works to their original holders, including museums and private collectors. This new edition of a book first published in 1950 includes the original illustrations from the first edition plus a wealth of new imagery and ephemera uncovered during extensive research, including WWII photo-graphs, many taken by Rorimer himself, that are accompanied by gorgeous reproductions of many of the Old Masters Rorimer helped save by artists such as Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruegel, Vermeer, Goya, Velazquez, and van Eyck. Maps created specially for this volume, and other facts about WWII history and geography, add new dimension to a remarkable story of courage, perseverance, and ultimately, triumph.
Download or read book The Greatest Treasure Hunt in History The Story of the Monuments Men Scholastic Focus written by Robert M. Edsel and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert M. Edsel brings the story of his #1 NYT bestseller for adults The Monuments Men to young readers for the first time in this dynamic, narrative nonfiction project packed with photos. Robert M. Edsel, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Monuments Men, brings this story to young readers for the first time in a sweeping, dynamic adventure detailing history's greatest treasure hunt.As the most destructive war in history ravaged Europe, many of the world's most cherished cultural objects were in harm's way. The Greatest Treasure Hunt in History recounts the astonishing true story of 11 men and one woman who risked their lives amidst the bloodshed of World War II to preserve churches, libraries, monuments, and works of art that for centuries defined the heritage of Western civilization. As the war raged, these American and British volunteers -- museum curators, art scholars and educators, architects, archivists, and artists, known as the Monuments Men -- found themselves in a desperate race against time to locate and save the many priceless treasures and works of art stolen by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
Download or read book Monument Man written by Harold Holzer and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The artist who created the statue for the Lincoln Memorial, John Harvard in Harvard Yard, and The Minute Man in Concord, Massachusetts, Daniel Chester French (1850–1931) is America's best-known sculptor of public monuments Monument Man is the first comprehensive biography of this fascinating figure and his illustrious career. Full of rich detail and beautiful archival photographs, Monument Man is a nuanced study of a preeminent artist whose evolution ran parallel to, and deeply influenced, the development of American sculpture, iconography, and historical memory. Monument Man was specially commissioned by Chesterwood / National Trust for Historic Preservation. The release will coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of Chesterwood, his country home and studio, as a public site and with a major renovation of the Lincoln Memorial. The book includes a comprehensive geographical guide to French's public work.
Download or read book Saving Italy The Race to Rescue a Nation s Treasures from the Nazis written by Robert M. Edsel and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-05-06 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Monuments Men: "An astonishing account of a little-known American effort to save Italy's…art during World War II." —Tom Brokaw When Hitler’s armies occupied Italy in 1943, they also seized control of mankind’s greatest cultural treasures. As they had done throughout Europe, the Nazis could now plunder the masterpieces of the Renaissance, the treasures of the Vatican, and the antiquities of the Roman Empire. On the eve of the Allied invasion, General Dwight Eisenhower empowered a new kind of soldier to protect these historic riches. In May 1944 two unlikely American heroes—artist Deane Keller and scholar Fred Hartt—embarked from Naples on the treasure hunt of a lifetime, tracking billions of dollars of missing art, including works by Michelangelo, Donatello, Titian, Caravaggio, and Botticelli. With the German army retreating up the Italian peninsula, orders came from the highest levels of the Nazi government to transport truckloads of art north across the border into the Reich. Standing in the way was General Karl Wolff, a top-level Nazi officer. As German forces blew up the magnificent bridges of Florence, General Wolff commandeered the great collections of the Uffizi Gallery and Pitti Palace, later risking his life to negotiate a secret Nazi surrender with American spymaster Allen Dulles. Brilliantly researched and vividly written, the New York Times bestselling Saving Italy brings readers from Milan and the near destruction of The Last Supper to the inner sanctum of the Vatican and behind closed doors with the preeminent Allied and Axis leaders: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Churchill; Hitler, Göring, and Himmler. An unforgettable story of epic thievery and political intrigue, Saving Italy is a testament to heroism on behalf of art, culture, and history.
Download or read book The Rape of Europa written by Lynn H. Nicholas and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-12-22 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award The real story behind the major motion picture The Monuments Men. The cast of characters includes Hitler and Goering, Gertrude Stein and Marc Chagall--not to mention works by artists from Leonardo da Vinci to Pablo Picasso. And the story told in this superbly researched and suspenseful book is that of the Third Reich's war on European culture and the Allies' desperate effort to preserve it. From the Nazi purges of "Degenerate Art" and Goering's shopping sprees in occupied Paris to the perilous journey of the Mona Lisa from Paris and the painstaking reclamation of the priceless treasures of liberated Italy, The Rape of Europa is a sweeping narrative of greed, philistinism, and heroism that combines superlative scholarship with a compelling drama.
Download or read book Rescuing Da Vinci written by Robert M. Edsel and published by Laurel Editions. This book was released on 2006 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uses photographs to tell the untold story of the "Monuments Men" and their discovery of more than 1,000 repositories, many of which contained paintings, sculpture, furniture, and other treasures stolen by the Nazis.
Download or read book The Monuments Men written by Josh Lanyon and published by JustJoshin Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Someone is watching. Someone is waiting. Despite having attracted the attention of a dangerous stalker, Special Agent Jason West is doing his best to keep his mind on his job and off his own troubles. But his latest case implicates one of the original Monuments Men in the theft and perhaps destruction of part of the world's cultural heritage--a lost painting by Vermeer. Naval Reserve Lieutenant Commander Emerson Harley wasn't just a World War 2 hero, he was the grandfather Jason grew up idolizing. In fact, Grandpa Harley was a large part of what inspired Jason to join the FBI's Art Crime Team. Learning that his legendary grandfather might have turned a blind eye to American GIs "liberating" priceless art treasures at the end of the war is more than disturbing. It's devastating. Jason is determined to clear his grandfather's name, even if that means breaking a few rules and regulations himself--putting him on a collision course with romantic partner BAU Chief Sam Kennedy. Meanwhile, someone in the shadows is biding his time...
Download or read book Shadowed by Grace written by Cara C. Putman and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2014 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An American woman on assignment in Italy to photograph the frontlines during World War II finds love after becoming involved with a soldier dedicated to saving great monuments and works of art from the Third Reich.
Download or read book Summers with Lincoln written by James A. Percoco and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2009-08-25 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A journey across America revealing “the history of how seven of these monuments came to be . . . and what they mean to us today” (The Washington Times). Across the country, in the middle of busy city squares and hidden on quiet streets, there are nearly two hundred statues erected in memory of Abraham Lincoln. No other American has ever been so widely commemorated. A few years ago, Jim Percoco, a history teacher with a passion for both Lincoln and public sculpture, set off to see what he might learn about some of these monuments—what they meant to their creators and to the public when they were unveiled, and what they mean to us today. The result is a fascinating chronicle of four summers on the road looking for Lincoln stories in statues of marble and bronze. Percoco selects seven emblematic works, among them Thomas Ball’s Emancipation Group, erected east of the Capitol in 1876 with private funds from African Americans and dedicated by Frederick Douglass; Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s majestic Standing Lincoln of 1887 in Chicago; Paul Manship’s 1932 Lincoln the Hoosier Youth, in Fort Wayne, Indiana; and Gutzon Borglum’s 1911 Seated Lincoln, struggling with the pain of leadership, beckoning visitors to sit next to him on his metal bench in Newark, New Jersey. At each stop, Percoco chronicles the history of the monument, spotlighting its artistic, social, political, and cultural origins. His descriptions draw fresh meaning from mute stone and cold metal—raising provocative questions not just about who Lincoln might have been, but about what we’ve wanted him to be in the monuments we’ve built.
Download or read book The New Monuments and the End of Man written by Robert Slifkin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How leading American artists reflected on the fate of humanity in the nuclear era through monumental sculpture In the wake of the atomic bombings of Japan in 1945, artists in the United States began to question what it meant to create a work of art in a world where humanity could be rendered extinct by its own hand. The New Monuments and the End of Man examines how some of the most important artists of postwar America revived the neglected tradition of the sculptural monument as a way to grapple with the cultural and existential anxieties surrounding the threat of nuclear annihilation. Robert Slifkin looks at such iconic works as the industrially evocative welded steel sculptures of David Smith, the austere structures of Donald Judd, and the desolate yet picturesque earthworks of Robert Smithson. Transforming how we understand this crucial moment in American art, he traces the intersections of postwar sculptural practice with cybernetic theory, science-fiction cinema and literature, and the political debates surrounding nuclear warfare. Slifkin identifies previously unrecognized affinities of the sculpture of the 1940s and 1950s with the minimalism and land art of the 1960s and 1970s, and acknowledges the important contributions of postwar artists who have been marginalized until now, such as Raoul Hague, Peter Grippe, and Robert Mallary. Strikingly illustrated throughout, The New Monuments and the End of Man spans the decades from Hiroshima to the Fall of Saigon, when the atomic bomb cast its shadow over American art.
Download or read book The Berlin Masterpieces in America written by Peter J. Bell and published by Giles. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new volume tells the story of some of the paintings rescued by the the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) organization, the so-called "Monuments Men." In December 1945, 202 paintings, found in German salt mines 2,100 feet underground, where they had been hidden to escape the allied bombing of Berlin, were brought to the United States "for safe keeping" by the Department of the Army. They were exhibited in 1948 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, before some of them were sent on a whistle-stop tour of 13 US cities, despite furious opposition from museum directors, Gallery staff, the public, government officials, and a resolution from 98 leading art authorities demanding the immediate return of the works to Germany. All the paintings, examples of Flemish, Dutch, German, French, English, and Italian Schools, were from museums in Berlin, and had been found in April 1945, along with 100 tons of Reichsbank gold, by the special team of art historians and experts, seconded in the US army, and charged with locating and restituting works of art looted by the Nazis. This book is the first to consider the paintings themselves; it features 22 artworks that were in the original NGA exhibition, including four paintings on loan from Berlin, augmented by others from Cincinnati Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, Washington, The Getty Museum, Miami University (Oxford, OH), and the Taft Museum.
Download or read book ArtCurious written by Jennifer Dasal and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wildly entertaining and surprisingly educational dive into art history as you've never seen it before, from the host of the beloved ArtCurious podcast We're all familiar with the works of Claude Monet, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous reproductions of his water lilies on umbrellas, handbags, scarves, and dorm-room posters. But did you also know that Monet and his cohort were trailblazing rebels whose works were originally deemed unbelievably ugly and vulgar? And while you probably know the tale of Vincent van Gogh's suicide, you may not be aware that there's pretty compelling evidence that the artist didn't die by his own hand but was accidentally killed--or even murdered. Or how about the fact that one of Andy Warhol's most enduring legacies involves Caroline Kennedy's moldy birthday cake and a collection of toenail clippings? ArtCurious is a colorful look at the world of art history, revealing some of the strangest, funniest, and most fascinating stories behind the world's great artists and masterpieces. Through these and other incredible, weird, and wonderful tales, ArtCurious presents an engaging look at why art history is, and continues to be, a riveting and relevant world to explore.
Download or read book First Casualty written by Toby Harnden and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning journalist reveals the dramatic true story of the CIA's Team Alpha, the first Americans to be dropped behind enemy lines in Afghanistan after 9/11. America is reeling; Al-Qaeda has struck and thousands are dead. The country scrambles to respond, but the Pentagon has no plan for Afghanistan—where Osama bin Laden masterminded the attack and is protected by the Taliban. Instead, the CIA steps forward to spearhead the war. Eight CIA officers are dropped into the mountains of northern Afghanistan on October 17, 2001. They are Team Alpha, an eclectic band of linguists, tribal experts, and elite warriors: the first Americans to operate inside Taliban territory. Their covert mission is to track down Al- Qaeda and stop the terrorists from infiltrating the United States again. First Casualty places you with Team Alpha as the CIA rides into battle on horseback alongside the warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum. In Washington, DC, few trust that the CIA men, the Green Berets, and the Americans’ outnumbered Afghan allies can prevail before winter sets in. On the ground, Team Alpha is undeterred. The Taliban is routed but hatches a plot with Al-Qaeda to hit back. Hundreds of suicidal fighters, many hiding weapons, fake a surrender and are transported to Qala-i Jangi—the “Fort of War.” Team Alpha’s Mike Spann, an ex-Marine, and David Tyson, a polyglot former Central Asian studies academic, seize America’s initial opportunity to extract intelligence from men trained by bin Laden—among them a young Muslim convert from California. The prisoners revolt and one CIA officer falls—the first casualty in America’s longest war, which will last two decades. The other CIA man shoots dead the Al-Qaeda jihadists attacking his comrade. To survive, he must fight his way out against overwhelming odds. Award-winning author Toby Harnden gained unprecedented access to all living Team Alpha members and every level of the CIA. Superbly researched, First Casualty draws on extensive interviews, secret documents, and deep reporting inside Afghanistan. As gripping as any adventure novel, yet intimate and profoundly moving, it tells how America found a winning strategy only to abandon it. Harnden reveals that the lessons of early victory and the haunting foretelling it contained—unreliable allies, ethnic rivalries, suicide attacks, and errant US bombs—were ignored, tragically fueling a twenty-year conflict. "Masterful, complex, and heartfelt, from the deeply personal to the critically strategic. Captures many lessons on many levels." —Ambassador Hank Crumpton, former senior CIA officer
Download or read book The Venus Fixers written by Ilaria Dagnini Brey and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-06-22 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An untold chapter in WWII history, the story of the corps of unlikely soldiers who saved Italy's most precious art and architecture from destruction.
Download or read book Painting Materials written by R. J. Gettens and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The combined training and experience of the authors of this classic in the varied activities of painting conservation, cultural research, chemistry, physics, and paint technology ideally suited them to the task they attempted. Their book, written when they were both affiliated with the Department of Conservation at Harvard's Fogg Art Museum, is not a handbook of instruction. It is, instead, an encyclopedic collection of specialized data on every aspect of painting and painting research. The book is divided into five sections: Mediums, Adhesives, and Film Substances (amber, beeswax, casein, cellulose, nitrate, dragon's blood, egg tempera, paraffin, lacquer, gum Arabic, Strasbourg turpentine, water glass, etc.); Pigments and Inert Materials (over 100 entries from alizarin to zinnober green); Solvents, Diluents, and Detergents (acetone, ammonia, carbon tetrachloride, soap, water, etc.); Supports (academy board, dozens of different woods, esparto grass, gesso, glass, leather, plaster, silk, vellum, etc.); and Tools and Equipment. Coverage within each section is exhaustive. Thirteen pages are devoted to items related to linseed oil; eleven to the history and physical and chemical properties of pigments; two to artificial ultramarine blue; eleven to wood; and so on with hundreds of entries. Much of the information — physical behavior, earliest known use, chemical composition, history of synthesis, refractive index, etc. — is difficult to find elsewhere. The rest was drawn from such a wide range of fields and from such a long span of time that the book was immediately hailed as the best organized, most accessible work of its kind. That reputation hasn't changed. The author's new preface lists some recent discoveries regarding pigments and other materials and the pigment composition chart has been revised, but the text remains essentially unchanged. It is still invaluable not only for museum curators and conservators for whom it was designed, but for painters themselves and for teachers and students as well.
Download or read book How the Jews Defeated Hitler written by Benjamin Ginsberg and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most common assumptions about World War II is that the Jews did not actively or effectively resist their own extermination at the hands of the Nazis. In this powerful book, Benjamin Ginsberg convincingly argues that the Jews not only resisted the Germans but actually played a major role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. The question, he contends, is not whether the Jews fought but where and by what means. True, many Jews were poorly armed, outnumbered, and without resources, but Ginsberg shows persuasively that this myth of passivity is solely that--a myth. Instead, the Jews resisted strongly in four key ways: through their leadership role in organizing the defense of the Soviet Union, their influence and scientific research in the United States, their contribution to allied espionage and cryptanalysis, and their importance in European resistance movements. In this compelling, cogent history, we discover that Jews contributed powerfully to Hitler's defeat.
