High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Robert M. Edsel (born 1956) is an American writer and businessman. He is the author of the non-fiction books, Rescuing Da Vinci and The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History about art treasures preserved during and after World War II and the heroes who saved them. Edsel is the founder and president of the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art which received the 2007 National Humanities Medal and has donated two albums of photographic evidence of the Third Reich`s theft of art treasures to the United States National Archives.