Saving Italy

Robert Edsel's history of the efforts to protect Italy's artistic and cultural treasures on the battlelines of WWII has added interest with the coming release of George Clooney's film MONUMENT MEN, based on Edsel's earlier book on this subject. Edoardo Ballerini gives a polished narration of a dramatic and engaging story, and he certainly knows his Italian. His pace, however, is overly measured, establishing an elegiac tone more suited to an epilogue than a narrative. Also, his perfectly accented Italian names stand out from his otherwise unaccented English. Text and narrator are both quite good--but not necessarily with each other. D.A.W. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine