🧲 Books like this
The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century
Edward Dolnick · back to the book
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
Include books by the same authorProvenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art
Laney Salisbury, Aly Sujo · 339 pages
A tautly paced investigation of one the 20th century's most audacious art frauds, which generated hundreds of forgeries—many of them still hanging in prominent museums and private collections todayProvenance is the extraordinary narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate deceptions in art history. Investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo brilliantly recount the tale of a g
Selling Hitler
Robert Harris · 402 pages
"The extraordinary story of the con job of the century-- the faking of the Hitler "diaries"--Jacket.
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
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.
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.
Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation
Dean Jobb · 336 pages
"It was a time of unregulated madness. And nowhere was it madder than in Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties. Speakeasies thrived, gang war shootings announced Al Capone's rise to underworld domination, Chicago's corrupt political leaders fraternized with gangsters, and yellow journalism only contributed to the excesses. The frenzy of stock market gambling was rampant. Enter a slick, smoot
Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wall Street's Wildest Con
Guy Lawson · 368 pages
Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal
Ben Macintyre · 384 pages
Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. Inside the traitor was a man of loyalty; inside the villain was a hero. The problem for Chapman, his spymasters, and his lovers was to know where one persona ended and the other began.In 1941, after training as a German spy in occupied France, Chapman
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.
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
Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend
Mitchell Zuckoff · 440 pages
You've heard of the scheme. Now comes the man behind it. In Mitchell Zuckoff's exhilarating book, the first nonfiction account of Charles Ponzi, we meet the charismatic rogue who launched the most famous and extraordinary scam in the annals of American finance.It was a time when anything seemed possible--instant wealth, glittering fame, fabulous luxury--and for a run of magical weeks in the spring
The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation
Rosemary Sullivan · 400 pages
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
Hannah Arendt · 312 pages
The Lost Painting
Jonathan Harr · 279 pages
A decaying palazzo on a hilltop near the Adriatic coast, and in the basement, cobwebbed and dusty, an archive unknown to scholars. Here, a young graduate student from Rome makes a discovery that inspires a search for a painting lost for almost two centuries. The artist was Caravaggio, a revolutionary painter beset by personal demons. Four hundred years ago, he drank and brawled in the taverns and
Hiroshima
John Hersey · 118 pages
Describes the effect of the bombing of Hiroshima on six survivors of the atomic blast.
Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America
Annie Jacobsen · 614 pages
In the chaos following World War II, the U.S. government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich's scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis' once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler's scientists and their families to the United States. Many of these men were accused of war crimes,
IBM and the Holocaust
Edwin Black · 528 pages
IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany -- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing throughout World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s
History of a Disappearance: The Story of a Forgotten Polish Town
Filip Springer · 318 pages
Lying at the crucible of Central Europe, the Silesian village of Kupferberg suffered the violence of the Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, the World War I. After Stalin's post-World War II redrawing of Poland's borders, Kupferberg became Miedzianka, a town settled by displaced people from all over Poland and a new center of the Eastern Bloc's uranium-mining industry. Decades of neglect and en
Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling
Ross King · 378 pages
"In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo Buonarroti to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel in Rome. Four years earlier, at the age of twenty-nine, Michelangelo had unveiled his masterful statue of David in Florence; however, he had little experience as a painter, even less working in the delicate medium of fresco, and
Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil
Tom Mueller · 238 pages
For millennia, fresh olive oil has been one of life's necessities, not just as food but also as medicine, a beauty aid, and a vital element of religious ritual. Today's researchers are continuing to confirm the remarkable, life giving properties of true extra-virgin, and "extra-virgin Italian" has become the highest standard of quality. But what if this symbol of purity has become deeply corrupt?
The Nazi Hunters
Andrew Nagorski · 416 pages
"Describes the small group of men and women who sought out former Nazis all over the world after the Nuremberg trials, refusing to let their crimes be forgotten or allowing them to quietly live inconspicuous, normal lives."--NoveList.
17 Carnations: The Royals, the Nazis, and the Biggest Cover-Up in History
Andrew Morton · 384 pages
This book is a meticulously researched historical tour de force about the secret ties among Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, the Duke of Windsor, and Adolf Hitler before, during, and after World War II. Andrew Morton tells the story of the feckless Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor, his American wife Wallis Simpson, the bizarre wartime Nazi plot to make him a puppet king after the invasi
The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans
Mark Jacobson · 362 pages