The Monuments Men (book)

Robert M. Edsel was born in Texas and headed a successful oil exploration company until selling it in 1995. He was spending time in Europe when he began wondering how a large amount of the area's artwork and architecture had survived the considerable devastation of World War II. He became more interested in the topic after reading Lynn H. Nicholas's 1994 book The Rape of Europa, which details the Nazi plunder of Europe's art during the war. Edsel got in touch with Nicholas and offered to help produce and finance a documentary based on her book. That film ultimately released in 2007 to positive reviews. In 2006, Edsel published Rescuing Da Vinci, a book consisting of 460 photographs displaying a visual history of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program for which the Monuments Men worked. In 2007, Edsel successfully lobbied the U.S. Congress to pass a resolution formally recognizing the efforts of the Monuments Men during World War II. The organization worked to put together biographies of many of the over 350 Monuments Men members, most of whom had already died. from President George W. Bush Later in 2007, the Monuments Men Foundation was a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. Edsel was assisted with the writing of The Monuments Men by Bret Witter, who also co-wrote the 2008 book Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World. ==Synopsis==

The Monuments Men covers the operations of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) unit beginning with its formation as a result of the Roberts Commission in 1943. The unit became an active part of the war effort following the Allied invasion of Normandy, While there were around 350 people working for the MFAA by the group's end in 1951, during its early period prior to the end of hostilities there were only eight operating in Northern Europe and 27 in Italy. These members worked close to the front lines, and were frequently lacking in transportation, equipment, and accurate maps. one in the castle of Neuschwanstein, on the German-Austrian border, where 21,000 pieces were eventually recovered, and one in the Austrian salt mines of Altaussee The MFAA eventually returned over five million pieces, including many paintings and works of sculpture but also books and scrolls, reliquaries, stained glass stolen from cathedrals, 5,000 church bells that the Nazis had planned to melt down, and more. ==Reception==

The Monuments Men released to generally favorable reviews. In The New Criterion, Marco Grassi called the book "compelling" but believed that a more "straightforward" approach that minimized the unnecessary inventions of dialogue and character development would have been more effective. ==Film adaptation==

In 2012, it was announced that George Clooney would be adapting The Monuments Men into a feature film directed by and starring himself. Released in 2014, the film also starred Matt Damon, Bill Murray, and John Goodman. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 30% of the film's 257 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Its intentions are noble and its cast is impressive, but neither can compensate for The Monuments Men stiffly nostalgic tone and curiously slack narrative." The film gave its characters different names from their real-life counterparts, and its writers received criticism for historical inaccuracies. ==References==