false 102352 0 0 1272863 0393019624 9780393019629 7 <![CDATA[Cruelest Miles, The: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race against an Epidemic]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182420841m/1272863.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182420841s/1272863.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1272863.Cruelest_Miles_The_The_Heroic_Story_of_Dogs_and_Men_in_a_Race_against_an_Epidemic 3.62 13 Alaska, 1925: the diptheria serum is 674 miles away. Without it, the people of Nome will not survive.

Nome, Alaska, sits on the edge of the Bering Sea two degrees below the Arctic Circle, and there are few more forbidding places on earth, especially in winter. Dr. Curtis Welch knew the signs of diphtheria, knew that his patients—many of them children—would die without a shipment of fresh serum.

The port was icebound and the nearest railhead was almost 700 miles away across mountains, rivers, and the treacherous ice of Norton Sound. A blizzard was brewing, and airplanes, in 1925, could not fly in such conditions. Only the dogs could do it. A relay was set up, and the drivers, many of them Native Alaskans, set off into the night at 60š below zero, often trusting their lead dogs to find the trail under feet of driven snow. The legendary heroism and endurance of the men and dogs in the Serum Run need no enhancement. Here, for the first time, their story is told in full. 34 b/w illustrations.

]]> 102353 3.88 152 51 102352 3.80 84 35 362908 3.67 43 11 2003 6361913 1594202206 9781594202209 27 <![CDATA[Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1251303542m/6361913.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1251303542s/6361913.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6361913-provenance 3.83 66 A tautly paced investigation of one the 20th century's most audacious art frauds, which generated hundreds of forgeries-many of them still hanging in prominent museums and private collections today

Provenance is the extraordinary narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate deceptions in art history. Investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo brilliantly recount the tale of a great con man and unforgettable villain, John Drewe, and his sometimes unwitting accomplices.

Chief among those was the struggling artist John Myatt, a vulnerable single father who was manipulated by Drewe into becoming a prolific art forger. Once Myatt had painted the pieces, the real fraud began. Drewe managed to infiltrate the archives of the upper echelons of the British art world in order to fake the provenance of Myatt's forged pieces, hoping to irrevocably legitimize the fakes while effectively rewriting art history.

The story stretches from London to Paris to New York, from tony Manhattan art galleries to the esteemed Giacometti and Dubuffet associations, to the archives at the Tate Gallery. This enormous swindle resulted in the introduction of at least two hundred forged paintings, some of them breathtakingly good and most of them selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many of these fakes are still out in the world, considered genuine and hung prominently in private houses, large galleries, and prestigious museums. And the sacred archives, undermined by John Drewe, remain tainted to this day.

Provenance reads like a well-plotted thriller, filled with unforgettable characters and told at a breakneck pace. But this is most certainly not fiction; Provenance is the meticulously researched and captivating account of one of the greatest cons in the history of art forgery.]]> 102352 3.80 84 35 2884300 3.83 66 27 2009