Rescuing Da Vinci: Hitler and the Nazis Stole Europe's Great Art - America and Her Allies Recovered It - Tapa dura

Mr. Edsel has collected hundreds of photographs documenting the extent of the Nazis' looting and the Allies' efforts to protect or rescue art treasures. We see Goering's private museum of stolen masterpieces, American soldiers recovering Leonardo's Lady With an Ermine and Rembrandt's rolled-up Night Watch being transported across Holland to safety. Particularly memorable is a photograph of the massive Winged Victory sculpture in the Louvre being lowered down the museum steps with ropes and pulleys before to its evacuation in advance of the Nazi invasion. One shudders with gratitude -- for the fact that the piece survived the war and for a book that reminds us of what is at stake when the enemies of civilization seize power. --The Wall Street Journal

Rescuing Da Vinci by Robert M. Edsel...is a crime story, writ so large it covers a continent. It gathers together, for the first time, nearly 500 photos documenting the Nazi theft of tens of thousands of artworks from European museums and private collections. And it details the immense, painstaking, though little-recognized, efforts of Allied armies to recover and return these precious items. --The Chicago Tribune

Mr. Edsel has collected hundreds of photographs documenting the extent of the Nazis' looting and the Allies' efforts to protect or rescue art treasures. We see Goering's private museum of stolen masterpieces, American soldiers recovering Leonardo's "Lady With an Ermine" and Rembrandt's rolled-up "Night Watch" being transported across Holland to safety. Particularly memorable is a photograph of the massive "Winged Victory" sculpture in the Louvre being lowered down the museum steps with ropes and pulleys before to its evacuation in advance of the Nazi invasion. One shudders with gratitude -- for the fact that the piece survived the war and for a book that reminds us of what is at stake when the enemies of civilization seize power. --The Wall Street Journal

During and following WWII, a special multinational group of more than 350 men and women, mostly American and British, served behind enemy lines and joined frontline military units to ensure the preservation, protection, liberation and restitution of the world's greatest artistic and cultural treasures. This band of unsung heroes; formally referred to as the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) section, or commonly referred to as the Monuments Men, worked tirelessly to track down, identify and catalogue millions of priceless works of art and irreplaceable cultural artifacts, including masterpieces by Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Vermeer, that had been stolen by Hitler and the Nazis. Rescuing Da Vinci, is an exhaustively researched historical account written by Robert M. Edsel, author of The Monuments Men. The book features nearly 500 photos documenting the Nazi theft of tens of thousands of artworks from European museums and private collections, as well as photos of the heroes who rescued these treasures, and images of the most famous and beloved artwork in the world photographed in ways never seen before, including Da Vinci s Mona Lisa, hidden in an ambulance for safe keeping, and Michelangelo s David, entombed in brick because it was too large to move to safety. The detailed documentation, inventories and photographs developed and catalogued by the Monuments Men during and following World War II, have made possible, and continue to make possible, the restitution of stolen artworks of to rightful owners and their descendents.