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

New York Times Bestseller "A poignant, fascinating story, bringing to life the soldier-scholars who saved Italy's treasures."―Evan Thomas, best-selling author of Ike’s Bluff and Sea of Thunder 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.