Compact, lively ... Greek officials labored mightily to guard their treasures. Much of Talty’s story turns on these curators and their quiet efforts to thwart German theft.
Talty presents characters worthy of our interest, but he tends to flatten them into stock types ... Yet Mr. Talty does not ignore his heroes’ ambivalence.
The achievement of Talty’s book: to rescue men and women from diplomatic oblivion and tell a story of war from a revealing, unexpected angle. A fast-paced tale of heroic scholar-spies.
