What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Hide books by the same authorThe Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century
Edward Dolnick · 384 pages
The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War
Lynn H. Nicholas · 498 pages
A discussion on the theft and collection of great European art in World War 2.
Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis
Robert M. Edsel · 496 pages
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 histor
The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer
Anne-Marie O'Connor
Contributor to the Washington Post Anne-Marie O'Connor brilliantly regales us with the galvanizing story of Gustav Klimt's 1907 masterpiece -- the breathtaking portrait of a Viennese Jewish socialite, Adele Bloch-Bauer. The celebrated painting, stolen by Nazis during World War II, subsequently became the subject of a decade-long dispute between her heirs and the Austrian government. When the U.S.
And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris
Alan Riding
On June 14, 1940, German tanks rolled into a silent and deserted Paris. Eight days later, a humbled France accepted defeat along with foreign occupation. The only consolation was that, while the swastika now flew over Paris, the City of Light was undamaged. Soon, a peculiar kind of normality returned as theaters, opera houses, movie theaters and nightclubs reopened for business. This suited both c
Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World's Most Coveted Masterpiece
Noah Charney · 327 pages
Presents a history of the world's most pilfered masterpiece--Jan van Eyck's "Ghent Alterpiece," treasured for its central panel, "The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb"--which has been looted in three wars, burned, forged, smuggled, hunted by the Nazis, and stolen thirteen times.
The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren
Jonathan Lopez · 340 pages
Jonathan Lopez has drawn on never-before-seen documents from dozens of archives to write a revelatory new biography of the world's most famous forger. Neither unappreciated artist nor antifascist hero, Van Meegeren emerges as an ingenious, dyed-in-the-wool crook who plied the forger's trade far longer than he ever admitted--a talented Mr. Ripley armed with a paintbrush. Lopez also explores a netwo
Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History
Robert Hughes · 534 pages
The founding of Rome is shrouded in legend, but current archaeological evidence supports the theory that Rome grew from pastoral settlements and coalesced into a city in the 8th century BC. It developed into the capital of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and finally the Roman Empire. For almost a thousand years, Rome was the most politically important, richest and largest city in the Western
The Orpheus Clock: The Search for My Family’s Art Treasures Stolen by the Nazis
Simon Goodman · 368 pages
Blue: The History of a Color
Michel Pastoureau · 216 pages
"Blue has had a long and topsy-turvy history in the Western world. Once considered a hot color, it is now icy cool. The ancient Greeks scorned it as ugly and barbaric, but most Americans and Europeans now pick it as their favorite color. In this history, the renowned medievalist Michel Pastoureau traces the changing meanings of blue from its rare appearances in prehistoric art to its international
The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism
Ross King · 448 pages
Chronicles the origins of Impressionism against the backdrop of the artistic and cultural events of the nineteenth century as exemplified in the work of two artists--Ernest Meissonier and Edouard Manet.
Da Vinci's Ghost
Toby Lester · 275 pages
Vitruvian Man is the world's most famous drawing, by one of the world's most famous artists. The image has become visual shorthand for artistic genius and scientific inquiry, and yet nobody knows anything about it. In Da Vinci's Ghost, critically acclaimed historian Toby Lester examines the forces that converged in 1490 to turn an idea that had been around for centuries into this iconic image, bri
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery
David Attenborough, Susan Owens · 223 pages
Describes the methods by which selected European artists, from Leonardo Da Vinci to Mark Catesby, portrayed the natural world during the Age of Discovery.
History of Art
H.W. Janson, Anthony F. Janson · 767 pages
Added to the Fifth Edition Revised are more than forty concise discussions of cultural developments paralleling movements in art, from ancient Greek times through our own Postmodern era. These masterly essays focus mainly on music and theater, and also include such topics as Greek and Roman mythology, Christian iconography, Western monastic orders, and medieval guilds. These new features enrich th
The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I
Roger Shattuck · 397 pages
The modernism of our times explained through a study of four significant men.
The Stones of Florence
Mary McCarthy · 230 pages
Picture-and-text book on Italy. Includes all aspects of Florentine life, from art and architecture to religion and politics.
The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank
Willy Lindwer · 204 pages
The "unwritten" final chapter of "Anne Frank: Diary Of A Young Girl" tells the story of the time between Anne Frank's arrest and her death through the testimony of six Jewish women who survived the hell from which Anne Frank never returned.
Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II
Mitchell Zuckoff · 478 pages
In Nov. 1942 a U.S. cargo plane crashed into the Greenland ice cap, the B-17 sent on the search-and-rescue mission got caught in a storm and also crashed, miraculously all nine men aboard survived. A second rescue operation was launched, but the plane, the Grumman Duck, flew into a storm and vanished. The survivors of the B-17 spent 148 days fighting to stay alive while waiting for rescue by famed
Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II
Vicki Constantine Croke · 343 pages
"At the onset of World War II, [Billy] Williams formed Elephant Company and was instrumental in defeating the Japanese in Burma and saving refugees, including on his own 'Hannibal Trek,' [becoming] a media sensation during the war, telling reporters that the elephants did more for him than he was ever able to do for them"--
The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club
Phillip M. Hoose · 198 pages
"The true story of a group of boy resistance fighters in Denmark after the Nazi invasion"-- "At the outset of World War II, Denmark did not resist German occupation. Deeply ashamed of his nation's leaders, fifteen-year-old Knud Pedersen resolved with his brother and a handful of schoolmates to take action against the Nazis if the adults would not. Naming their secret club after the fiery British