Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter

Robert M. Edsel is an American author and advocate for the preservation of cultural heritage. After a career in oil and gas exploration, his interest in art and architecture led him to research the wartime Monuments officers. He founded the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art in 2007. Bret Witter, his collaborator on The Monuments Men, had worked in book publishing before becoming a full-time writer and co-author.

Together they write narrative history that brings a large military and cultural operation down to a human scale. The Monuments Men follows six officers from the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program during the eleven months between D-Day and V-E Day. Museum professionals and scholars move through war-damaged Europe, tracing art looted by the Nazis and trying to protect buildings, archives and collections still in danger.

The book became a number-one New York Times bestseller and inspired George Clooney’s 2014 film. Edsel continued the subject in Rescuing Da Vinci, Saving Italy and the young-readers title The Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. Witter has collaborated on numerous nonfiction books, including Dewey with Vicki Myron. The foundation established by Edsel received a 2007 National Humanities Medal for its work honoring the Monuments officers.

Start with The Monuments Men. It is the essential meeting point of Edsel’s research and Witter’s narrative craft, turning the recovery of Europe’s displaced masterpieces into an accessible account of people working against time, bureaucracy and war.