Monument Man

This book was written to bring hope and faith and encourage all who read it--to let the individual know this is not the end. Someday they will see that family member again if they believe in God. Let the Lord wrap his arms around the individual and know that he loves him or her, and through this book, God will bring comfort... God bless and keep you in his care.

The artist who created the statue for the Lincoln Memorial, John Harvard in Harvard Yard, and The Minute Man in Concord, Massachusetts, Daniel Chester French (1850–1931) is America's best-known sculptor of public monuments Monument Man is the first comprehensive biography of this fascinating figure and his illustrious career. Full of rich detail and beautiful archival photographs, Monument Man is a nuanced study of a preeminent artist whose evolution ran parallel to, and deeply influenced, the development of American sculpture, iconography, and historical memory. Monument Man was specially commissioned by Chesterwood / National Trust for Historic Preservation. The release will coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of Chesterwood, his country home and studio, as a public site and with a major renovation of the Lincoln Memorial. The book includes a comprehensive geographical guide to French's public work.

At the same time Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the western world, his armies were methodically seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe. The Fuehrer had begun cataloguing the art he planned to collect as well as the art he would destroy: "degenerate" works he despised. In a race against time, behind enemy lines, often unarmed, a special force of American and British museum directors, curators, art historians, and others, called the Momuments Men, risked their lives scouring Europe to prevent the destruction of thousands of years of culture. Focusing on the eleven-month period between D-Day and V-E Day, this fascinating account follows six Monuments Men and their impossible mission to save the world's great art from the Nazis.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award The real story behind the major motion picture The Monuments Men. The cast of characters includes Hitler and Goering, Gertrude Stein and Marc Chagall--not to mention works by artists from Leonardo da Vinci to Pablo Picasso. And the story told in this superbly researched and suspenseful book is that of the Third Reich's war on European culture and the Allies' desperate effort to preserve it. From the Nazi purges of "Degenerate Art" and Goering's shopping sprees in occupied Paris to the perilous journey of the Mona Lisa from Paris and the painstaking reclamation of the priceless treasures of liberated Italy, The Rape of Europa is a sweeping narrative of greed, philistinism, and heroism that combines superlative scholarship with a compelling drama.

In the collection of short stories entitled Dolphin Nose the author explores his thoughts and observations looking at the events from his own life and in the world around to give his perspective. As per the world events, the best he could do was to come out with his own list of wishful thinking. He ponders on many pointless pursuits in life, all presented with light humor.

Contributions by Allan Amanik, Kelly B. Arehart, Sue Fawn Chung, Kami Fletcher, Rosina Hassoun, James S. Pula, Jeffrey E. Smith, and Martina Will de Chaparro Till Death Do Us Part: American Ethnic Cemeteries as Borders Uncrossed explores the tendency among most Americans to separate their dead along communal lines rooted in race, faith, ethnicity, or social standing and asks what a deeper exploration of that phenomenon can tell us about American history more broadly. Comparative in scope, and regionally diverse, chapters look to immigrants, communities of color, the colonized, the enslaved, rich and poor, and religious minorities as they buried kith and kin in locales spanning the Northeast to the Spanish American Southwest. Whether African Americans, Muslim or Christian Arabs, Indians, mestizos, Chinese, Jews, Poles, Catholics, Protestants, or various whites of European descent, one thing that united these Americans was a drive to keep their dead apart. At times, they did so for internal preference. At others, it was a function of external prejudice. Invisible and institutional borders built around and into ethnic cemeteries also tell a powerful story of the ways in which Americans have negotiated race, culture, class, national origin, and religious difference in the United States during its formative centuries.

The controversy surrounding the origin of the universe, earth, and all living things is an ongoing debate in the public sphere. In Gaining the High Ground over Evolutionism, author Robert J. O’Keefe presents analysis leading to the realization that to obtain knowledge of origin is also to discover the origin of knowledge. Gaining the High Ground over Evolutionism recognizes the ideological nature of the topic of origin. It steps out of the realm of science and begins to deal with the question by reviewing the scientific revolution and its implications in Western thought, studying the interpretation of Genesis 1, and describing relevant aspects of the history of geology, biology, and astronomy. O’Keefe summarizes science as a means of gaining knowledge and discusses the scientific method as it is applied to natural history. He examines how the court system has dealt with the controversy; draws points from C. S. Lewis’s argument against naturalism; and then confronts the ideology behind evolutionary science, the philosophy of naturalism, presenting what he sees are the best arguments against it. Finally, he summons back the grounds for the authority of the Bible and discusses the partnership of reason and faith. Expanding the scope of inquiry beyond the confines of science, O’Keefe shows that the idea of a creator needs to be attended with more seriousness than post-Enlightenment science and philosophy have ever thought necessary.