Book of the week: Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures From the Nazis by Robert M. Edsel

(Norton, $29)

“Imagine an Italy without da Vinci’s Last Supper, the Ponte Vecchio, the Duomo, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa,” said Matthew Price in Newsday. That scenario almost became a reality, and would have, author Robert M. Edsel reports, without a concerted effort by a small group of historians, architects, and artists assigned by the American and British armies to preserve Italy’s cultural treasures during World War II. Edsel, a former Texas oil tycoon who has lived in Florence and now devotes much of his time and money to memorializing the work of the so-called Monuments Men, clearly has passion for his subject. His 450-page book teems with detail and subplots, some of them extraneous.

Often enough, “the book reads like a good spy thriller, with double and triple crosses, frantic chases and hiding places, and a fascinating cast of characters,” said Bill Marvel in The Dallas Morning News. Two scholars from Yale University assume center stage: Fred Hartt took orders from no one as he roamed Italy in a jeep, often arriving at a scene in the immediate wake of a shelling. His colleague, Army Capt. Deane Keller, quickly rounded up a team of engineers and craftsmen to piece together priceless frescoes in Pisa that were damaged by American artillery fire. Generals, foot soldiers, and ordinary citizens all play significant roles, too; Father Guido Anelli, a Catholic priest and resistance fighter who parachuted behind enemy lines, “probably deserves a book and a movie all by himself.” Yet art remains “always in the foreground” in Edsel’s account. Michelangelo’s David survived thanks to a brick cocoon built by local artisans. By contrast, the fresco-filled Abbey of Monte Cassino was obliterated by Allied bombs.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Indeed, the Allies weren’t always heroes in the battle Edsel describes, said Hugh Eakin in The Wall Street Journal. Allied bombings, including a 1943 air assault on Milan that nearly erased da Vinci’s The Last Supper, destroyed numerous cultural treasures. And Edsel doesn’t hesitate to give credit to a few men on the other side, including Gen. Karl Wolff of the S.S. Though the Nazis smuggled many priceless works out of Italy, they also established a very effective art-protection unit of their own. “One of the awkward lessons of Edsel’s revealing history,” in fact, is that defending freedom and defending culture don’t always go hand in hand.