Monuments Men is the story of the MFAA, a special part of the Army created during WW2 who were tasked with finding the art that the Nazi party had stolen. These are not your 18-year-old GIs but rather (mostly) American and British men who worked in professions like art history, restoration and curating previous to the war.
I live for shit like that; however Monuments Men failed to capture my attention.
It’s been a while since I’ve read such a dense book. Monuments Men reads very much like a personable history text book – which isn’t really a bad thing… but when the last few books you’ve read have been popcorn books it’s a bit of an adjustment. I guess it just wasn’t what I expected – with the previews for the recently released movie I was expecting a story. But really it was more like information there isn’t really dialogue and there are a lot of “letters to home” interspersed between the sections. There are also some pictures from the time period which is always interesting.
All in all I would recommend this book to someone who is very interested in the subject and the movie to anyone else (and if you like the book do not see the movie).
This is only tangentially related, but you should go watch the episode of Graham Norton on YouTube where Matt Damon, Bill Murray and Hugh Bonneville are promoting the Monuments Men movie. It is fucking HYSTERICAL. I’ve never seen people have more fun on television. I’d link to it but I’m at work and YouTube is blocked.