Monuments Men, The

The heroic, #1 New York Times bestselling tale of the men who saved the world's greatest art from the Nazis, and the basis for the acclaimed motion picture starring George Clooney.

At the same time Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the western world, his armies were methodically seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe. The Fuhrer had begun cataloguing the art he planned to collect as well as the art he would destroy: "degenerate" works he despised.

In a race against time, behind enemy lines, often unarmed, a special force of American and British museum directors, curators, art historians, and others, called the Monuments Men, risked their lives scouring Europe to prevent the destruction of thousands of years of culture.

Focusing on the eleven-month period between D-Day and V-E Day, this fascinating account follows six Monuments Men and their impossible mission to rescue invaluable art.

Robert M. Edsel is the Founder and President of the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, a not-for-profit entity that received the National Humanities Medal, the highest honor given in the United States for work in the humanities field. He also serves as a Trustee at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. He lives in Dallas.

Bret Witter cowrote the bestseller Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World (Grand Central). He lives in Louisville, KY.