The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland by Michelle Young is a richly researched account of an apparently nondescript art historian who rose from a low-level volunteer job just prior to the Second World War to a preeminent curatorial position at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris. There, …
Continue reading The invisible woman who took on the Third Reich and saved art for the ages
The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück by Lynne Olsen is an extraordinary telling of a little-told Nazi horror story, barely hinted at by the subtitle, “How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler's All-Female Concentration Camp.” This goes beyond any book you’ve read or movie you have seen. The S.S.-run Ravensbruck hard labor camp …
Continue reading Courage in the face of fascism: the warnings of history
Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown is the story of Japanese American patriots fighting for the U.S. in World War II while their parents and siblings were incarcerated in concentration (euphemistically termed relocation) camps in the West and South. In this intensely moving and deeply researched narrative, Brown lays out in grueling detail the …
Continue reading More winter reading – pt. 2, non-fiction books
Marjorie Arons-Barron 