The Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter | Teen Ink

The Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter

April 8, 2014
By MaxMU BRONZE, Cincinnati, Ohio
MaxMU BRONZE, Cincinnati, Ohio
2 articles 0 photos 0 comments

The Monuments Men is about a group of Artist, Sculpture, and Historians during WW II. Their goal was to save artwork at risk from the destruction from Combat and the Nazi’s trying to destroy peices of work. The book has pictures to give a better idea of it. Throughout point in the book they seem to make it easier to the reader by saying where they are from and some backgrounds of them. They also sometimes say what rank they were around the time they were put in to this mission.




This book switches throughout viewpoints, such as The Monuments Men, Allied overall, and Hitler’s point of view. The key members of my story are mainly the Monuments Men. There are many different characters in the book, the main person they seem to talk about its George Scout. Throughout the story they provide a map of their locations of where they went. With all the facts it does make it confusing, but it will go in order of events. When Witter and Edsel made the book they made it unemotional, and this helps some people understand the text better and make it more clear. Most of the book takes place in Europe and parts of Germany. My favorite part of the book was after the war when they were finding the list of the art in the salt mine in Germany.




The book’s main writer Robert M. Edsel started researching about art conservation in the 1980’s. He collected thousand of documents and photographs of the Monuments Men. In 2004 he had established a research office in Dallas Texas to help him explore the Monuments Men further. During his research on whereabouts of lost art, Edsel uncovered two Nazi photo albums. These books included photos of artwork that would be seen by Hitler and they determined to keep or destroy.



I rank this book a 9 out of 10. It is a great non-fiction book, but gets too slow at some points in the book. I would recommend this book to more young adult readers. The book has bad language at times and sometimes confusing context. It may be also confusing when switching throughout viewpoints, because at one point you may be at the Monuments Men’s point of view. Then the next at Hitler’s point of view of the war or his art museum dream. But if you can handle it I recommend this book to anyone who may be interested in art work and or learning about World War II.


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