photo credit: Laurel Publishing

The New York Times' Randy Kennedy shines a light on a still-little-known part of WWII history: the efforts of Allied officers and soldiers like 88-year-old Bernard Taper to save and repatriate stolen treasures during and after the war. Even during the war their work — when compared with saving lives and preserving ways of life — was sometimes discounted. Some members of the military referred to these soldiers as "Venus fixers," a term with more than a hint of the effete. But the accomplishments of these soldiers, better known as the Monuments Men, are finally starting to come into sharper focus. RESCUING DA VINCI, a lavishly illustrated book devoted to them, with dozens of pictures newly unearthed from archives, has just been published by Robert M. Edsel, a retired Texas oilman who poured in $2.5 million of his own money to self-publish the work because, in his view, "time was running out" to tell this particular story.

This month, in large part because of Edsel's work, Congress passed a resolution honoring the Monuments Men (whose number also included some women and civilians), saying that the value of their work "cannot be overstated and set a moral precedent" for the preservation of culture. A statement Edsel certainly agrees with, as he found that he delved into the stories of the men, the more amazed he became at how little Americans seem to know about it, especially in an era with a newfound devotion to the Greatest Generation. It might, he mused, make for a great movie. "This has got heroes," he said. "It's got buried treasure. It's got untold stories. It's got everything. You want excitement? We've got it in spades right here."