Book: The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family’s Century of Art and Loss
Author: Edmund de Waal
Reviewer: Kathy Brown, Director, Planning and Research, NCSU Libraries

The Ephrussi family built an immense fortune in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, only to have it sucked away by the Nazi regime.  The author reconstructs his family’s history without sentimentality and traces the journeys of a collection of netsuke from household to household.  The collection—all that remains of the family’s vast holdings—survived because it was hidden in a mattress.  The Ephrussis escaped with their lives but lost their world forever.