Safeguarding History: Trailblazing Adventures Inside the Worlds of Collecting and Forging History. Questo articolo non è disponibile.Safeguarding History: Trailblazing Adventures Inside the Worlds of Collecting and Forging History

Kenneth W. Rendell, founder and director of the Museum of World War II, has been a dealer since 1959 in historical letters and documents dating from the Renaissance to the present time. His business, with offices in Boston and a gallery in New York City, encompasses all areas, including the law, politics, military, art, literature, music, science, and others. He has authored the standard reference books in the field, including History Comes to Life (University of Oklahoma Press). For Rendell, the field of forgeries and journalistic hoaxes is another major interest. He debunked the infamous “Hitler diaries” on behalf of Newsweek Magazine in 1983, and then headed the investigation for Stern Magazine into how the hoax had been perpetrated. For Time Warner he proved the diary of Jack the Ripper was a hoax, and he has been involved in every major forgery case in recent decades. He is the author of Forging History (University of Oklahoma Press), the standard reference work on the subject. As an expert witness, Rendell has appeared in criminal trials where his expertise and testimony would make a difference, including the trial of the Mormon White Salamander murders. He received the Justice Department’s Distinguished Service Award for his work leading to convictions for thefts from the National Archives and the Library of Congress. He also won the only two Tax Court cases deciding the value of archives without compromise: one for the Internal Revenue Service (the Otto Kerner Papers), the other for the taxpayer (the Northern Pacific Railroad). Another major interest of Rendell’s is Western American history. His extensive collection in this field was the basis of his book The Western Pursuit of the American Dream, which the New York Times said “succeeds in giving a sense of the struggle to tame the gorgeous wilderness that stretched beyond the tidy civilizations of the east. . . . It’s worth spending time with.”