Robert M. Edsel Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

About Robert M. Edsel:

Robert M. Edsel is a well renowned American nonfiction author, businessman and tennis player. Edsel is also the president and founder of Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art which is a recipient of the National Humanities medal. His famous works includes “ Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis, ” “ Nazi-Thieves and the Greatest-Treasure Hunt in History, ” “ The Monuments-Men: Allied Heroes, ” and “ Rescuing Da Vinci.”

Early Childhood Life

Robert M. Edsel was born to American parents, Alpha Ray and Norma Edsel in Illinois. His father, Alpha Ray, is a WWII marine corps veteran and Norma, a housewife, who spends most of her time teaching and volunteering for various organizations and charities. Though he was born is Illinois, Edsel was raised in Dallas, it is this city where he spent most of his childhood days.

Edsel is the oldest of the three siblings. He attended her early education in St. Mark’s school, a private school for boys renowned for its emphasis in arts, communications and athletics. This school built established Edsel’s passion for learning. He is also the team captain of the school’s tennis team. Edsel regularly joined state and regional competitions and manage to excel in competitions and at the same-time maintain national rankings.

Exploring the True Meaning of Life

In the year 1981, Edsel began his ventures in gas and oil exploration business. He is the founder of Gemini Exploration, the company that pioneered the technology of horizontal drilling. In 1995, his company was recognized as one of the most active horizontal drillers throughout United States. On the same year, Union Pacific Resources Company bought for $37 million dollars Edsel’s company. In 1996, together with his family, Edsel relocated to Europe to pursue interests in the arts. Edsel immersed himself in the cultures of Italy and France; he focused on learning new language, art, customs and architecture. Edsel, during this time gained appreciation for historical works and artifacts. While settling in Florence, Edsel wondered how the art treasures and monuments manage to survived the devastation created by the World War II. This prompted Edsel to find answers. He conducted major results and resulted to the creation of a book. In addition to that, Edsel also produced, “The Rape OF Europa”, a documentary film, Edsel spent nine weeks with the filmmakers to shoot the film throughout Europe and some parts of Russia. The film was narrated by famous actress, Joan Allen and gained recognition from various film festivals in the United States. Edsel also co-wrote “Rescuing Da-Vinci”, a collection of photographs that’s shows the history-of-art heists of monumental proportions and the rescue effort done by the Allied forces.

Rescuing Da Vinci

While Robert Edsel is living in Florence, he began to develop methodologies and created plans on how these national treasures be protected and retrieved from Hitler and Nazis. Right after divorcing, Edsel began an extensive research and serious efforts to understand and learn more about the issue, this was in 2000. This led to the creation of a Dallas research office, a research facility dedicated for this sole purpose only.

By 2005, Edsel began to collect documents, photographs and started writing the manuscript for “Rescuing Da Vinci”. In 2006, Laurel Publishing released Rescuing Da-Vinci, a historical and largely photographic book compiled and written by Robert Edsel. This book centers on of the looting in epic quantities done by the Nazis throughout Europe and the repatriation of the stolen art works. An aspect normally ignored in most historical books. Most of the people know little of the systematic and large scale theft done by Hitler to the Europeans art work. Hitler’s ultimate dream is to create the world’s biggest museum. He diverted his focus form prosecuting and executing people to looting precious historical artifacts. Most of the European museums took extraordinary efforts to protect these national treasures from Hitler.

When the US troops entered Europe, they assembled an elite force made up of British and American curators, directors and historians. This special group was known as the “Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives” worked hand in hand with the allied armies. This special force attempted to prevent and decrease damage to European architectures and monuments. At the same-time, they are responsible for the retrieval of the stolen art works. Their crusade to track down these stolen art works from Hitler became one of the greatest-national treasure hunts in the history. Their efforts did paid off, the Allied Forces were able to locate and retrieve a great quantity of sculptures, arts, archives, furniture’s and other cultural-treasures from almost 1,000 mines and castles throughout Europe.

However, thousands of these national treasures were still missing and left unrecovered from the Nazis like the portraits done by famous renaissance artist Raphael. Rescuing Da Vinci relays the story through brief and actual documentation of the events and more than 460 historical photographs. Some of these photographs were printed in color. This collection of photographs were never before published in any book nor been seen in the past decades.

Monuments Men

In 2009, Robert Edsel published his second book, “The Monuments-Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi-Thieves and the Greatest-Treasure Hunt in History”. This book tells the stories of a special Allied force made up museum conservators, directors and curators who made all the efforts and risked their lives in protecting and keeping Europe’s masterpieces from falling into the Nazi’s hands. These people shared the common vision to understand the threat on the civilizations artistic achievements and ways on how to protect these historical treasures. Their main task is to simply save as much of the Europe’s cultural and historical-treasures while in battle.

An upcoming film adaptation of the “Monuments-Men” will be released on December 2013. The movie was co-written, produced and directed by famous actor-director, George Clooney. Also starring in this movie is Matt Damon and Cate Blanchett. Mr. Robert Edsel is quite confident that this upcoming movie would provide awareness and recognition to the Monuments-Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, a non-profit organization founded and established few years ago to protect the legacy of the Monuments-Men and aims to complete the mission of retrieving these stolen historical treasure and returning it them to the rightful owners.