Catalog Search Results
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On the night of June Fourth, a woman gives birth in a Beijing hospital alone. Thus begins the unraveling of Su Lan, a brilliant physicist who until this moment has successfully erased her past, fighting what she calls the mind's arrow of time. When Su Lan dies unexpectedly seventeen years later, it is her daughter Liya who inherits the silences and contradictions of her life. Liya, who grew up in America, takes her mother's ashes to China--to her,...
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"It is the early spring of 2016 and Queen Elizabeth is at Windsor Castle in advance of her 90th birthday celebrations. But the preparations are interrupted when a guest is found dead in one of the Castle bedrooms. The scene suggests the young Russian pianist strangled himself, but a badly tied knot leads MI5 to suspect foul play was involved. The Queen leaves the investigation to the professionals--until their suspicions point them in the wrong direction....
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Drawing on a trove of confidential museum records and frank interviews, Felch and Frammolino give a fly-on-the-wall account of the inner workings of a world-class museum and tell the story of the Getty's dealings in the illegal antiquities trade. Fast-paced and compelling, "Chasing Aphrodite" exposes the layer of dirt beneath the polished facade of the museum business.
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Italy, 1943--Germany occupies much of the country, placing the Jewish population in grave danger during World War II. As children, Eva Rosselli and Angelo Bianco were raised like family but divided by circumstance and religion. As the years go by, the two find themselves falling in love. But the church calls to Angelo and, despite his deep feelings for Eva, he chooses the priesthood. Now, more than a decade later, Angelo is a Catholic priest and Eva...
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"On 25 August 1914 in the Belgian university town of Louvain, the nature of modern European war took a terrible new turn. German occupying troops torched the medieval town, slaughtered hundreds of civilians, and deliberately destroyed their entire cultural heritage, including the world-famous university library. The international community reacted in horror - 'Holocaust of Louvain' proclaimed the Daily Mail - and the behaviour of the Germans at Louvain...
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"Tells the dark and compelling stories of iconic cultural objects that were stolen, smuggled or sold, and eventually returned back to their original owner. This book is structured as a series of vivid stories in which the reader joins the author as she uncovers a cultural treasure and follows its often-convoluted trail. Along the way author and reader encounter a cast of fascinating characters from the underbelly of the cultural world: unscrupulous...
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"A fast and exciting read. . . . This survey of Owsley's career will appeal to both science and legal buffs." —Publishers Weekly
The story of the Smithsonian's brilliant forensic anthropologist and the 9,000-year-old skeleton that sparked his landmark lawsuit against the U.S. government
When he is not studying ancient skeletons, Doug Owsley is enlisted by the State Department and the FBI to identify remains. He
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As Adolf Hitler attempted to take over the western world, his armies were methodically seeking the finest art treasures in Europe. The Fuehrer had begun cataloguing the art he would collect and the "degenerate" works he would destroy. Behind enemy lines, often unarmed, a special force of American and British museum directors, curators, and art historians raced against time to prevent the destruction of thousands of years of culture. (Bestseller)
12) What was ours
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Like millions of indigenous people, many Native American tribes do not control their own material history and culture. For the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes living on the isolated Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, new contact with lost artifacts risks opening old wounds but also offers the possibility for healing. What Was Ours is the story of how a young journalist and a teenage powwow princess, both of the Arapaho tribe, traveled...
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"A fascinating account of both the historical and current struggle of Native Americans to recover sacred objects that have been plundered and sold to museums. Museum curator and anthropologist Chip Colwell asks the all-important question: Who owns the past? Museums that care for the objects of history or the communities whose ancestors made them?"--Provided by the publisher.
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"The gripping true story of the bold and determined museum curators who saved the priceless treasures of China's Forbidden City in the years leading up to World War II and beyond"--
Spring, 1933. Peking's Forbidden City is tense with fear and expectation. Japan's aircraft drone overhead, its troops and tanks are only hours away. How will the curators protect the vast imperial art collections in their charge? A million pieces of art-- objects that...
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An unlikely World War II platoon has been tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners. With the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could they possibly succeed? But as the Monuments Men, as they were called, found themselves in a race against time, they would risk their lives to protect...
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Milan, 1492: When a sixteen-year old beauty becomes the mistress of the Duke of Milan, she must fight for her place in the palace, and against those who want her out. Soon, she finds herself sitting before Leonardo da Vinci, who wants to ensure his own place in the ducal palace by painting his most ambitious portrait to date. Munich, World War II: After a modest conservator unwittingly places a priceless Italian Renaissance portrait into the hands...