And that’s almost all he knew about them—his father rarely spoke of their family history or heritage. The gutmanns, as they were known then, rose from a small Bohemian hamlet to become one of Germany’s most powerful banking families. Scribner Book Company. They also amassed a magnificent, Guardi, world-class art collection that included works by Degas, Botticelli, and many, Renoir, many more.

But when his father passed away, and Simon received his old papers, a story began to emerge. Only after his father’s death did Simon begin to piece together the clues about the Gutmanns’ stolen legacy and the Nazi looting machine. But the nazi regime snatched from them everything they had worked to build: their remarkable art, their prominent social standing, their immense wealth, and their very lives.

. An extraordinary piece of history. A fresh and lively read” the christian science monitor—the passionate, true story of one man’s single-minded quest to reclaim his family’s art collection, gripping, stolen by the Nazis in World War II. Simon goodman’s grandparents came from German-Jewish banking dynasties and perished in concentration camps.

With painstaking detective work across two continents, Simon has been able to prove that many works belonged to his family and successfully secure their return.

The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities-- From Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's Greatest Museums

More valuable than the recovery of the vases, however, is the discovery of the smuggler's card index detailing his deals and dealers. Are discovered in the swimming pool of a German-based art smuggler. The narrative leads to the doors of some major institutions: Sothebys, the Getty Museum in L. A. The museum of fine arts in boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York among them.

Filled with great characters and human drama, The Medici Conspiracy authoritatively exposes another shameful round in one of the oldest games in the world: theft, smuggling and duplicitous dealing, all in the name of art. Among the loot are the irreplaceable and highly collectable vases of Euphronius, the equivalent in their field of the sculpture of Bernini or the painting of Michelangelo.

Eight apuleian vases of the fourth century B. C. Peter watson, a former investigative journalist for the London Sunday Times and author of two previous exposés of art world scandals, names the key figures in this network that has depleted Europe's classical artifacts. The story begins, as stories do in all good thrillers, with a botched robbery and a police chase.

It reveals the existence of a web of tombaroli—tomb raiders— who steal classical artifacts, and a network of dealers and smugglers who spirit them out of Italy and into the hands of wealthy collectors and museums.

Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art

It is the astonishing narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate cons in the history of art forgery. The true story of one of the twentieth century's most audacious art frauds Filled with extraordinary characters and told at breakneck speed, Provenance reads like a well-plotted thriller. Together they exploited the archives of British art institutions to irrevocably legitimize the hundreds of pieces they forged, many of which are still considered genuine and hang in prominent museums and private collections today.

. But this is most certainly not fiction. Stretching from london to paris to new york, investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo recount the tale of infamous con man and unforgettable villain John Drewe and his accomplice, the affable artist John Myatt.

Cultural Property Acquisitions Techniques & Issues in Cultural Resource Management

This book provides a concise, unbiased, and practical resource for those tasked with navigating the complicated and rapidly changing legal and ethical landscape governing the acquisition of cultural property and archaeological material. Museum staff--whether new to the field or working with collections for decades--are often overwhelmed by the complexities of acquiring cultural property, particularly antiquities and archaeological material.

Collecting practices now require a greater degree of transparency and cooperation with various stakeholders than in the past, and are under greater scrutiny to be in line with current legal requirements and ethical expectations.

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance

And so begins this extraordinarily moving memoir and detective story as de Waal discovers both the story of the netsuke and of his family, the Ephrussis, over five generations. A nineteenth-century banking dynasty in Paris and Vienna, the Ephrussis were as rich and respected as the Rothchilds. Having spent thirty years making beautiful pots―which are then sold, collected, and handed on―he has a particular sense of the secret lives of objects.

When he inherited a collection of 264 tiny Japanese wood and ivory carvings, called netsuke, he wanted to know who had touched and held them, and how the collection had managed to survive. Yet by the end of the world war ii, when the netsuke were hidden from the Nazis in Vienna, this collection of very small carvings was all that remained of their vast empire.

. A new york times bestselleran economist book of the year costa Book Award Winner for Biography Galaxy National Book Award Winner New Writer of the Year AwardEdmund de Waal is a world-famous ceramicist. Picador USA.

The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of 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. Vintage. Supreme court became involved in the case, its decision had profound ramifications in the art world. Winner of a California Book Award.

Picador USA. National bestsellerthe true story that inspired the movie Woman in Gold starring Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds. 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.

Expertly researched, a riveting tale of nazi war crimes, masterfully told, The Lady in Gold is at once a stunning depiction of fin-de siècle Vienna, and a fascinating glimpse into the high-stakes workings of the contemporary art world. One of the best books of the Year: The Huffington Post, The Christian Science Monitor.

Winner of the Marfield National Award for Arts Writing.

The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation's Largest Home

He summoned the famous landscape architect frederick law olmsted to tame the grounds, filled it with priceless art and antiques, collaborated with celebrated architect Richard Morris Hunt to build a 175, 000-square-foot chateau, and erected a charming village beyond the gates. This is the fascinating, “soaring and gorgeous” Karen Abbott story of how the largest house in America flourished, faltered, and ultimately endured to this day.

A new york times bestseller with an "engaging narrative and array of detail” the wall street Journal, grandest private residence in North America, the “intimate and sweeping” Raleigh News & Observer untold, true story behind the Biltmore Estate—the largest, which has seen more than 120 years of history pass by its front door.

The story of biltmore spans world wars, and generations of the famous Vanderbilt family, the Jazz Age, the Depression, and features a captivating cast of real-life characters including F. Before their marriage, the wealthy and bookish Vanderbilt had dedicated his life to creating a spectacular European-style estate on 125, 000 acres of North Carolina wilderness.

Scott fitzgerald, henry james, thomas Wolfe, Teddy Roosevelt, James Whistler, John Singer Sargent, and Edith Wharton. She grew up in newport and paris, and her engagement and marriage to George Vanderbilt was one of the most watched events of Gilded Age society. Vintage. Newlywed edith was now mistress of an estate nearly three times the size of Washington, DC and benefactress of the village and surrounding rural area.

Babylon Berlin: Book 1 of the Gereon Rath Mystery Series

Raths finds himself up against paramilitaries and organized criminals. Martin. The spectator ukbabylon berlin is the first book in the international-bestselling series from Volker Kutscher that centers on Detective Gereon Rath caught up in a web of drugs, political intrigue, sex, and murder in Berlin as Germany teeters on the edge of Nazism.

It’s 1929 and berlin is the vibrating metropolis of post-war Germany―full of bars and brothels and dissatisfied workers at the point of revolt. The basis for the international tv sensation babylon berlin"cabaret on cocaine. Captures the dark glamour of a briefly exhilarating time between the wars. Npr"volker kutscher, who wrote the novels on which the series is based, has a similar disregard for the sanctity of his characters' lives as Thrones' George R.

He falls in love with charlotte, a typist in the homicide squad, and misuses her insider’s knowledge for his personal investigations. Vintage. Gereon rath is new in town and new to the police department. When a dead man without an identity, bearing traces of atrocious torture, is discovered, Rath sees a chance to find his way back into the homicide division.

R.

The Lost Museum

Between 1939 and 1944, as the Nazis overran Europe, they were also quietly conducting another type of pillage. The lost museum tells the story of the jewish art collectors and gallery owners in France who were stripped of rare works by artists such as Vermeer, Cézanne, Degas, Rembrandt, and Picasso. Vintage.

The book is filled with private family photos of this art, and it traces the fate of these works as they passed through the hands of top German officials, unscrupulous art dealers, some of which has never before been seen by the public, and unwitting auction houses such as Christie's and Sotheby's. Before they were through, 000 paintings, sculptures, the Nazis had taken more than 20, and drawings from France.

The lost museum explores the nazis' systematic confiscation of these artworks, Bernheim-Jeune, David-Weill, Rosenberg, focusing on the private collections of five families: Rothschild, and Schloss. Picador USA.

The Third Reich in History and Memory

Evans considers how the third reich is increasingly viewed in a broader international context, as part of the age of imperialism; discusses the growing emphasis on the larger economic and cultural circumstances of the era; and emphasizes the development of research into Nazi society, particularly in the understanding of Nazi Germany as a political system based on popular approval and consent.

Evans, offers a critical commentary on that transformation, the acclaimed author of the Third Reich trilogy, exploring how major changes in perspective have informed research and writing on the Third Reich in recent years. Drawing on his most notable writings from the last two decades, its economic intricacies, Evans reveals the shifting perspectives on Nazism's rise to political power, and its subterranean extension into postwar Germany.

Exploring the complex relationship between memory and history, Evans also points out the places where the growing need to confront the misdeeds of Nazism and expose the complicity of those who participated has led to crude and sweeping condemnation, when instead historians should be making careful distinctions.

Written with evans' sharp-eyed insight and characteristically compelling style, these essays offer a summation of the collective cultural memory of Nazism in the present, and suggest the degree to which memory must be subjected to the close scrutiny of history. In the seventy years since the demise of the Third Reich, there has been a significant transformation in the ways in which the modern world understands Nazism.

Vintage. In this brilliant and eye-opening collection, Richard J. Picador USA.

Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel

Of the dozen spies in the Arab Section at the war’s outbreak, five were caught and executed. Piercing. The new york times book review award-winning writer matti friedman’s tale of Israel’s first spies has all the tropes of an espionage novel, the bluff, clandestine meetings, disguise, betrayal, including duplicity, and the double bluff—but it’s all true.

Journalist and award-winning author Matti Friedman’s tale of Israel’s first spies reads like an espionage novel--but it’s all true. The four agents at the center of this story were part of a ragtag unit known as the Arab Section, conceived during World War II by British spies and Jewish militia leaders in Palestine.

. Meticulously researched and masterfully told, Spies of No Country is an eye-opening look at the paradoxes of the Middle East. Vintage. Intended to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage operations, the unit consisted of Jews who were native to the Arab world and could thus easily assume Arab identities.

In 1948, with israel’s existence hanging in the balance, these men went undercover in Beirut, where they spent the next two years operating out of a newsstand, collecting intelligence and sending messages back to Israel via a radio whose antenna was disguised as a clothesline. Wondrous.