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The Truffle Underground: A Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and Manipulation in the Shadowy Market of the World’s Most Expensive Fungus

Filed Under: Books Read

The Truffle Underground: A Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and Manipulation in the Shadowy Market of the World’s Most Expensive Fungus

The Truffle Underground: A Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and Manipulation in the Shadowy Market of the World's Most Expensive Fungus by Ryan Jacobs
Published by Clarkson Potter Publishers on June 4, 2019
Pages: 288
Format: hardback
Genres: Nonfiction, True Crime
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Synopsis

Beneath the gloss of star chefs and crystal-laden tables, the truffle supply chain is touched by theft, secrecy, sabotage, and fraud. Farmers patrol their fields with rifles and fear losing trade secrets to spies. Hunters plant poisoned meatballs to eliminate rival truffle-hunting dogs. Naive buyers and even knowledgeable experts are duped by liars and counterfeits.

This exposé documents the dark, sometimes deadly crimes at each level of the truffle’s path from ground to plate, making sense of an industry that traffics in scarcity, seduction, and cash.

When you get right down to it, who really cares that the Truffle business is just another crime laden enterprise. After reading this book, I understood that the Truffle business doesn’t really want to reform itself; the industry is very happy lying and manipulating the market as long as it is profitable.

I wonder does anyone have any sensibilities anymore. I can not forgive those who had dogs murdered that did nothing to protect them.

Until Thy Wrath be Past

Filed Under: Books Read

Until Thy Wrath be Past

Until Thy Wrath be Past by Åsa Larsson
Published by SilverOak on November 1, 2011
Series: Rebecka Martinsson, #4
Pages: 256
Format: hardback
Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Scandinavian and Nordic Mysteries & Thrillers
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Synopsis

It is the first thaw of spring and the body of a young woman surfaces in the River Thorne in the far north of Sweden. Rebecka Martinsson is working as a prosecutor in nearby Karuna. Her sleep has been disturbed by haunting visions of a shadowy, accusing figure. Could the body belong to the ghost in her dreams? And where is the dead girl's boyfriend? Joining forces once again with Police Inspectors Anna-Maria Mella, Rebecka is drawn into an investigation that centres on old rumours of a German supply plane that mysteriously disappeared in 1943.

The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World’s Most Expensive Painting

Filed Under: Books Read

The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World’s Most Expensive Painting

The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World's Most Expensive Painting by Ben Lewis
on June 25, 2019
Format: hardback
Genres: Art, Art History, Nonfiction
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Synopsis

An epic quest exposes hidden truths about Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, the recently discovered masterpiece that sold for $450 million—and might not be the real thing.

For two centuries, art dealers and historians searched in vain for the Holy Grail of art history: a portrait of Christ as the Salvator Mundi ("Savior of the World") by Leonardo da Vinci. At last, in 2005 a compelling candidate was discovered by a small-time Old Masters dealer at a second-rate auction house in New Orleans. After a six-year restoration, an exhibition at the National Gallery in London, and the help of canny Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier, the painting was sold to the news-making Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev. After the very-public fallout between Rybolovlev and Bouvier, the painting went on to make headlines again in 2017 as the most expensive painting ever sold when a proxy of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman won the masterwork at a Christie's auction for $450 million.

But controversy still surrounds the artwork: Did the auction house—and the art dealers, curators, and art historians behind this find--actually have the right painting, or is there another? Did Leonardo even paint a Salvator Mundi? Some scholars argue he was only occasionally painting at the time the work is dated. Was the painting restored to such an extent that it became a Leonardo, though it was in fact the work of his apprentices? In short: Is it the genuine artifact, the result of a frenzied marketing genius—or perhaps a little of both?

In a thriller-like pursuit of the truth, Ben Lewis examines the five-hundred-year Cinderella-story of this painting and, astonishingly, turns up the smoking guns, including the burnt initials of ownership by an English king on a different Salvator Mundi and the identity of the American family who owned the painting for some of its missing decades. Through this journey, we come to see how the global art market evolved to what it is today, and we are left to ask ourselves what art means to humanity, both past and present.