Protecting Our Nations' Treasures


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Defending National Treasures


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Defending National Treasures explores the fate of art and cultural heritage during the Nazi occupation of France. The French cultural patrimony was a crucial locus of power struggles between German and French leaders and among influential figures in each country. Karlsgodt examines the preservation policy that the Vichy regime enacted in an assertion of sovereignty over French art museums, historic monuments, and archeological sites. The limits to this sovereignty are apparent from German appropriations of public statues, Jewish-owned art collections, and key "Germanic" works of art from French museums. A final chapter traces the lasting impact of the French wartime reforms on preservation policy. In Defending National Treasures, Karlsgodt introduces the concept of patrimania to reveal examples of opportunism in art preservation. During the war, French officials sought to acquire coveted artwork from Jewish collections for the Louvre and other museums; in the early postwar years, they established a complicated guardianship over unclaimed art recovered from Germany. A cautionary tale for our own times, Defending National Treasures examines the ethical dimensions of museum acquisitions in the ongoing noble quest to preserve great works of art.




Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis


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From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Monuments Men: "An astonishing account of a little-known American effort to save Italy's…art during World War II." —Tom Brokaw When Hitler’s armies occupied Italy in 1943, they also seized control of mankind’s greatest cultural treasures. As they had done throughout Europe, the Nazis could now plunder the masterpieces of the Renaissance, the treasures of the Vatican, and the antiquities of the Roman Empire. On the eve of the Allied invasion, General Dwight Eisenhower empowered a new kind of soldier to protect these historic riches. In May 1944 two unlikely American heroes—artist Deane Keller and scholar Fred Hartt—embarked from Naples on the treasure hunt of a lifetime, tracking billions of dollars of missing art, including works by Michelangelo, Donatello, Titian, Caravaggio, and Botticelli. With the German army retreating up the Italian peninsula, orders came from the highest levels of the Nazi government to transport truckloads of art north across the border into the Reich. Standing in the way was General Karl Wolff, a top-level Nazi officer. As German forces blew up the magnificent bridges of Florence, General Wolff commandeered the great collections of the Uffizi Gallery and Pitti Palace, later risking his life to negotiate a secret Nazi surrender with American spymaster Allen Dulles. Brilliantly researched and vividly written, the New York Times bestselling Saving Italy brings readers from Milan and the near destruction of The Last Supper to the inner sanctum of the Vatican and behind closed doors with the preeminent Allied and Axis leaders: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Churchill; Hitler, Göring, and Himmler. An unforgettable story of epic thievery and political intrigue, Saving Italy is a testament to heroism on behalf of art, culture, and history.







Green Peace? Protecting Our National Treasures While Providing for Our National Security


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In the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Department of Defense ("DoD") convinced Congress that compliance with environmental and natural resource laws hampered the Armed Forces' readiness for combat by limiting use of its training ranges. This Article evaluates whether Congress's post-9/11 exemptions to three important natural resource laws are inefficient, unjust, and/or unwise by examining the effects these laws have had on national security and their real impacts on the natural world. The significance of these exemptions is reflected by the magnitude of the military's land holdings -- over 32 million acres providing habitat for 300 species listed under the Endangered Species Act. Given the potential impacts, DoD has not demonstrated that the exemptions are necessary or appropriate under the current circumstances, and, in fact, evidence suggests they have been harmful. Application of the precautionary principle exhorts that decisionmakers should protect these resources even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established. Abandoning protection of the country's natural resources, treasures that make this country worth defending, in the name of national security deserves greater thought and study, particularly given the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Navy sonar case and the Marine Corps' request to expand its bombing and training range in the Mojave Desert.




American Treasures


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The dramatic, never-before-told stories behind the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address: America's crown jewels that define its commitment to freedom.




The Jefferson Bible


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The Jefferson Bible, or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth as it is formally titled, was a book constructed by Thomas Jefferson in the latter years of his life by cutting and pasting numerous sections from various Bibles as extractions of the doctrine of Jesus. Jefferson's composition excluded sections of the New Testament containing supernatural aspects as well as perceived misinterpretations he believed had been added by the Four Evangelists. In 1895, the Smithsonian Institution under the leadership of librarian Cyrus Adler purchased the original Jefferson Bible from Jefferson's great-granddaughter Carolina Randolph for $400. A conservation effort commencing in 2009, in partnership with the museum's Political History department, allowed for a public unveiling in an exhibit open from November 11, 2011, through May 28, 2012, at the National Museum of American History.




A Principal Manager's Guide to Leverage Leadership 2.0


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Build better schools by training better leaders A Principal Manager’s Guide to Leverage Leadership answers the question that district leaders have been asking across the country: if Leverage Leadership is a roadmap for principals on how to lead great schools, what can principal managers and districts do to support them on that path? A Principal Manager’s Guide to Leverage Leadership offers a step-by-step guide to coaching principals to the highest levels of achievement, and it is rooted in studying the most successful principal managers and districts across the country. It can be used by principal managers/supervisors, superintendents, district and state leadership, and principal training organizations to accelerate the growth of principals in your community. Used in conjunction with Leverage Leadership 2.0, this book identifies the key actions principal managers should take to create exceptional school leaders, integrating the seven levers of leadership into district culture from the principal manager on up. With a particular emphasis on the two “super-levers” of data-driven instruction and student culture, this book is packed with advice, professional development materials, and real-world videos of principal managers in action, offering principal managers a valuable resource for bringing about change. A Principal Manager’s Guide to Leverage Leadership introduces a new unifying approach that is also highlighted in Leverage Leadership 2.0: See It, Name It, Do It. It gives you the tools to See it (see models of effective practice and identify gaps), Name it (name concrete actions for improvement) and Do it (provide means to practice these action steps until a principal masters them) With A Principal Manager’s Guide to Leverage Leadership in hand, principal managers, superintendents and principal training organizations can facilitate district-wide and state-wide transformations and hasten the benefit to the students and community as a whole.




Defending National Treasures


Book Description

National Treasures explores the fate of French art and heritage during the Nazi occupation of France, revealing the roots of contemporary cultural policy in the Vichy era and exposing a hidden convergence of resistance and collaboration in French museology.




National Treasures


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'Geeks triumph over the forces of darkness: nothing could have given me greater pleasure. Combining an exciting story with scrupulous research, Caroline Shenton has done her unlikely heroes proud' - Lucy Worsley As Hitler prepared to invade Poland during the sweltering summer of 1939, men and women from across London's museums, galleries and archives formulated ingenious plans to send the nation's highest prized objects to safety. Using stately homes, tube tunnels, slate mines, castles, prisons, stone quarries and even their own homes, a dedicated bunch of unlikely misfits packed up the nation's greatest treasures and, in a race against time, dispatched them throughout the country on a series of top-secret wartime adventures. National Treasures highlights a moment from our history when an unlikely coalition of mild-mannered civil servants, social oddballs and metropolitan aesthetes became the front line in the heritage war against Hitler. Caroline Shenton shares the interwoven lives of ordinary people who kept calm and carried on in the most extraordinary of circumstances in their efforts to save the Nation's historic identity.