Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis

Author: Robert M. Edsel
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393240452
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 491

Book Description
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.

Beneath a Scarlet Sky

Author: Mark Sullivan
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
ISBN: 9781503902374
Category : Germany
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A teenage boy in 1940s Italy becomes part of an underground railroad that helps Jews escape through the Alps, but when he is recruited to be the personal driver for a powerful Third Reich commander, he begins to spy for the Allies.

Summary of Robert M. Edsel's Saving Italy

Author: Everest Media,
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 44

Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The meeting between Hitler and Mussolini took place on July 19, 1943, at Villa Gaggia, near the town of Feltre, some fifty miles north of Venice. It was Hitler’s last trip to Italy. Mussolini had no interest in forming an alliance with Germany, but he was impressed by Hitler’s consolidation of power and the remarkable turnaround of German industry. #2 In 1943, Italy was almost out of resources, and the German High Command urged Hitler to take control of all Italian ground and air forces. Mussolini tried to explain Italy’s situation to Hitler, but he could not bring himself to admit that his country had been exhausted by the war. #3 On a clear summer morning in 1943, the entire Northwest African Strategic Air Force flew over Rome to bomb the Littorio and Ciampino Airdromes and the railway marshaling yards at Littorio and San Lorenzo. #4 The pope had left the safety and isolation of Vatican City to visit the victims of the second Allied bombing attack of Rome on August 13, 1943. He returned late that evening with his white cassock stained with dirt and blood.

Saving the Media

Author: Julia Cagé
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674968719
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 85

Book Description
The media are in crisis. Confronted by growing competition and sagging advertising revenue, news operations in print, on radio and TV, and even online are struggling to reinvent themselves. Many have gone under. For too many others, the answer has been to lay off reporters, join conglomerates, and lean more heavily on generic content. The result: in a world awash with information, news organizations provide citizens with less and less in-depth reporting and a narrowing range of viewpoints. If democracy requires an informed citizenry, this trend spells trouble. Julia Cagé explains the economics and history of the media crisis in Europe and America, and she presents a bold solution. The answer, she says, is a new business model: a nonprofit media organization, midway between a foundation and a joint stock company. Cagé shows how this model would enable the media to operate independent of outside shareholders, advertisers, and government, relying instead on readers, employees, and innovative methods of financing, including crowdfunding. Cagé’s prototype is designed to offer new ways to share and transmit power. It meets the challenges of the digital revolution and the realities of the twenty-first century, inspired by a central idea: that news, like education, is a public good. Saving the Media will be a key document in a debate whose stakes are nothing less crucial than the vitality of democracy.

Truthful Report on the Last Chances to Save Capitalism in Italy

Author: Gianfranco Sanguinetti
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0615948278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 137

Book Description
A translation of an infamous prank played at the expense of Italy's ruling class in 1975. Signed by "Censor," this book was actually written by Gianfranco Sanguinetti, a former member of the Situationist International.

Save Italy! Forget the Rest

Author: Tommy Vilar
Publisher: Thomas Kirkwood
ISBN: 1461048230
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Book Description
Dante Passoni, the long awaited Italian counterpart to James Bond, is a man of this century, not a relic of the cold war. He embodies the dynamism of the high-tech world rather than the public corpse of England's MI-6. Dante is as dashing as James in his prime, as charming as Italy herself, as bold and fearless as we imagine ourselves to be. Passoni brings nail-biting suspense, fun and fresh air wherever he goes. If you love Italy, its food, drink, cars and women; if you love adventure and romance touched by an occasional whiff of the outrageous; if you're in need of something legal that will quicken your pulse and reignite your senses . . . Save Italy! is for you.

Saving the Neighborhood

Author: Richard R. W. Brooks
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674073711
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 389

Book Description
Saving the Neighborhood tells the charged, still controversial story of the rise and fall of racially restrictive covenants in America, and offers rare insight into the ways legal and social norms reinforce one another, acting with pernicious efficacy to codify and perpetuate intolerance. The early 1900s saw an unprecedented migration of African Americans leaving the rural South in search of better work and equal citizenship. In reaction, many white communities instituted property agreements—covenants—designed to limit ownership and residency according to race. Restrictive covenants quickly became a powerful legal guarantor of segregation, their authority facing serious challenge only in 1948, when the Supreme Court declared them legally unenforceable in Shelley v. Kraemer. Although the ruling was a shock to courts that had upheld covenants for decades, it failed to end their influence. In this incisive study, Richard Brooks and Carol Rose unpack why. At root, covenants were social signals. Their greatest use lay in reassuring the white residents that they shared the same goal, while sending a warning to would-be minority entrants: keep out. The authors uncover how loosely knit urban and suburban communities, fearing ethnic mixing or even “tipping,” were fair game to a new class of entrepreneurs who catered to their fears while exacerbating the message encoded in covenants: that black residents threatened white property values. Legal racial covenants expressed and bestowed an aura of legitimacy upon the wish of many white neighborhoods to exclude minorities. Sadly for American race relations, their legacy still lingers.

First They Took Rome

Author: David Broder
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786637618
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
Italy’s political disaster under a microscope There is little that hasn’t gone wrong for Italy in the last three decades. Economic growth has flatlined, infrastructure has crumbled, and out-of-work youth find their futures stuck on hold. These woes have been reflected in the country’s politics, from Silvio Berlusconi’s scandals to the rise of the far right. Many commentators blame Italy’s malaise on cultural ills—pointing to the corruption of public life or a supposedly endemic backwardness. In this reading, Italy has failed to converge with the neoliberal reforms mounted by other European countries, leaving it to trail behind the rest of the world. First They Took Rome offers a different perspective: Italy isn’t failing to keep up with its international peers but farther along the same path of decline they are following. In the 1980s, Italy boasted the West’s strongest Communist Party; today, social solidarity is collapsing, working people feel ever more atomized, and democratic institutions grow increasingly hollow. Studying the rise of forces like Matteo Salvini’s Lega, this book shows how the populist right drew on a deep well of social despair, ignored by the liberal centre. Italy’s recent history is a warning from the future—the story of a collapse of public life that risks spreading across the West.

The Venus Fixers

Author: Ilaria Dagnini Brey
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0312429908
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Book Description
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.

Rick Steves Best of Scotland

Author: Rick Steves
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1641715804
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book Description
Hit Scotland's can't-miss sights, bites, and history in two weeks or less with Rick Steves Best of Scotland! Expert advice from Rick Steves on what's worth your time and money Two-day itineraries covering Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. Andrews, the Highlands, and the Isle of Skye Rick's tips for beating the crowds, skipping lines, and avoiding tourist traps The best of local culture, flavors, and haunts, including walks through the most interesting neighborhoods and museums Trip planning strategies like how to link destinations and design your itinerary, what to pack, where to stay, and how to get around Over 80 full-color maps and vibrant photos Experience the magic of Scotland for yourself with Rick Steves Best of Scotland! Planning a longer trip? Rick Steves Scotland is the classic, in-depth guide to spending more than two weeks exploring the country.