Book about Louvre during WWII Wins Third Book Award

NEW YORK - May 31, 2015 - PRLog -- New York, May 29, 2015 – Today at BookExpo America, North America’s largest publishing trade show, Indie Reader named Saving Mona Lisa: The Battle to Protect the Louvre During World War II its 2015 second place winner for non-fiction, describing the book as having the “emotional scope of a literary novel” as it “immerses the reader into the ongoing battle to preserve both a specific masterpiece and the larger treasure of humanity.” The book was also commended for its “artfully interspersed,” “lush, black and white period photos.”  Judges for the awards included some of the nation’s top publishers, agents and bloggers.

    The award comes on the heels of three other accolades: Earlier this month, Saving Mona Lisa was named a Benjamin Franklin Award winner (history) from the Independent Book Publishers Association. Also this month, the book was named a bronze medal winner in the Independent Publisher’s outstanding book of the year awards (history), chosen from 5,600 entries for the group’s "IPPY" awards, presented since 1996. In April, the book was also recognized as a finalist in the history category in the 17th annual Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards. A panel of more than 100 librarians and booksellers will determine the award winners, to be announced at the American Library Association Annual Conference in San Francisco on June 26.

    The author, Gerri Chanel, is a university professor and freelance business journalist who lived in Paris for five years, where she began the research for Saving Mona Lisa. She combed through numerous French archives, some of them accessible only in recent years due to the passage of time. She also had access to the few remaining living witnesses of the events. The book includes numerous images of the events, some of them never before published, from various archives in France and Germany and from surviving family members. For more information visit www.SavingMonaLisa.net.  Saving Mona Lisa (ISBN 978-0-615-99039-2) is available for purchase through all major online booksellers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) and local bookstores.

Contact: Andrea Kanen, Media Coordinator, info@heliopa.net