It's not often that one foreign government -- let alone two -- ask for an advance copy of an art book.

But that's what has happened with The Spoils of War: World War II and Its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance and Recovery of Cultural Property (Abrams, May). Russian president Boris Yeltsin wants to see the book's first-ever compilation of official statements, scholarly articles and international laws on the issue of plundered property, in order to combat the Russian parliament's recent vote to nationalize so-called "trophy art." And since much of the art was taken from Germany, the German government, naturally, wants a preview of the book as well.

"It's one of those marvelous accidents of publishing just at the right time," Abrams publisher Paul Gottlieb told PW. "This issue is bubbling up all around the world."

Indeed it is. Just as advance copies of The Spoils of War started circulating, the French government unveiled an exhibit of over 900 unclaimed works of art -- with the hopes that their owners would step forward and claim them. And a major article in the New York Times and other media reports are set to come.

For Elizabeth Simpson, the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts ancient art professor who served as editor of the book, the release of The Spoils of War ends "an amazing diplomatic task" of collecting, translating and editing essays by 52 of the world's leading experts on plundered art, a "case study of cooperation" that began when most of the group first met in a historic international symposium sponsored by the Center and its director, Susan Weber Soros, in January 1995.

Contributors include Lynn H. Nicholas, author of the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award-winning The Rape of Europa (Knopf), and Bernard Taper, a former "art intelligence officer." All symposium participants wrote follow-up reports -- except, that is, for Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts director Irina Antonova, who refused to contribute after a March 1995 Pravda article blasted the Russian symposium participants. A summary of her report is included in The Spoils of War instead.

Simpson also believes the stories included in these essays -- about a lost Raphael as well as the Amber Room from the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg, the German Quendlinberg treasures stolen by a U.S. soldier and the recent discovery of supposedly lost Trojan gold in Russian museums -- will be of interest to the general reading public. "Only in The Spoils of War is the complete story of these confiscated objects told," said Simpson. "And the book also provides an essential background on what people will be reading about in newspapers and books in months to come."

The Spoils of War has a conservative 5000-copy first printing, but Gottlieb is prepared to go back to press as needed, and believes it could become a breakout book along the lines of the bestselling Hidden Treasures Revealed, an earlier, more heavily illustrated Abrams book on plundered art that has sold over 200,000 copies to date. And as someone who has always stayed atop of trends in the art world, Gottlieb is already discussing the idea of a tie-in book to the French plundered art exhibition. "Just say we're working on it," he said.