I first met Michelle Young a dozen years ago inside the Woolworth Building — not just inside it, but deep inside it, past marble lobbies and hidden doorways most people never notice. She was overseeing one of her famous Untapped New York tours — part of the popular site she founded devoted to uncovering New York’s hidden history — making sure everything unfolded the way it should. Even from across the lobby, you could tell she had that rare kind of energy — someone genuinely excited by the world, and somehow makes you excited too.
From the minute she started pointing out lost passageways and tucked-away vaults, I knew we were going to be friends. She’s my kind of New Yorker: someone who thinks a secret staircase is cause for celebration.
Michelle has always had a sixth sense for spotting the extraordinary hiding in plain sight. With her first narrative nonfiction book, The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland, she brings that gift to the page. It’s the breathtaking true story of Rose Valland — the quiet, relentless French art historian who risked everything to save Jewish-owned art from the Nazis…