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The Venus Fixers: The Remarkable Story Of The Allied Soldiers Who Saved Italy's Art During World War II (2009)

by Ilaria Dagnini Brey(Favorite Author)

3.73 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0374283095 (ISBN13: 9780374283094)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

review 1: This tale of real-life intrigue blends military drama, human ingenuity, comedy of errors, and divine intervention. The Venus Fixers is beautifully written and reads like a rigorously researched novel. Readers who aren't familiar with the street grid for Florence, Italy and the Tuscany region may find much of the detail tedious and confusing. [A city map of Florence would have been helpful.] Reading the Venus Fixers makes me excited to read The Monuments Men to compare the same story as told from the U.S. point of view versus the Italian.
review 2: This is a combination of a historical work about World War II in Italy, a detective story and a suspense novel. It tells the story of the Monuments Officers in the Allied Forces who tried to save and restore Italian a... morert. The popular novel "The English Patient" was set in Monte Cassino, one of the tragic recipients of Allied Bombing. The clashes in style and personality between individuals who served in this capacity are developed. The detective aspect is the way that they worked to find out where the treasures were being hidden by the Italians and the Germans. because there was concern that Hitler wanted to seize certain works for his own legacy museum that he hoped to build in Linz, Austria, there was an urgency to take the art into protective custody before the Germans took it too far north. Intrigue between the Italian Fascists, the Vatican, the Germans and the Allies provides suspense. Very detailed research by the author but the writing style seems turgid at times. less

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