Thieves have been robbing tombs since before the pyramids were built, and conquerors have been claiming artworks as spoils of war for just as long. Over the past several centuries, these time-honored, unsavory traditions have filled the museums of the Western hemisphere with the treasures of the ancient world. The robbed and the defeated have always protested, but until recently their complaints were brushed off. In the past few decades, however, the so-called source nations, rich in antiquities, have upped the ante, cajoling, suing, bargaining and even building new museums in a quest to have artifacts that were taken from their territory—whether 2 or 200 years ago—returned once and for all. Sharon Waxman’s Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World, arrives on the heels of Italy’s successful campaign for the restitution of objects held by several major U.S. museums; it is a timely account of how the world of antiquities arrived at the situation it is in today.

Loot is largely confined to Egypt, Greece, Turkey and Italy, on the one hand, and the Louvre, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Getty Museum on the other. Although this leaves out other regions where the plundering of archaeological sites is a problem—Mexico, Central America and China, for example—it is a sensible approach to winnowing a vast topic down to 369 pages. What’s more, the Mediterranean in the 19th-century age of empire is where modern Western pilfering started, and it provides no shortage of excellent illustrations of the pertinent issues. The case of the Egyptian Chamber of Kings, for instance—how it got to Paris and whether it should go back—leads to debate concerning not only the conduct of Émile Prisse d’Avennes, the French explorer who removed the ancient wall reliefs from Karnak in 1843 without a permit, but also their transportation and subsequent care. Some of the sculptures were damaged or lost during their journey to Paris, and the remaining ones incurred further injury as the result of a botched restoration job at the Louvre a few years later.

Waxman is a Los Angeles–based journalist who began her career reporting on the Middle East. Her most recent beat, first at the Washington Post and then at the New York Times, was Hollywood rather than Brentwood, the locale of the Getty, whose extended travails with Italy ended in the return of 40 ancient artworks last fall. Yet she retells the stories of famous antiquities with verve and style, drawing on historical documents and extensive interviews to illuminate such cases as the discovery of the Rosetta Stone by Napoleon’s forces and the latter-day tale of the Euphronios krater, recently given back to Italy by the Met.

Loot does an excellent job of exploring the political underpinnings of the contest over antiquities, from the 19th-century race for trophies by European powers to contemporary efforts by once-colonized countries to reclaim their national identities through the repatriation of artifacts. Her critical distance allows her to see both sides of this tangled story, which is too often reduced to archaeologists and source nations versus museums and collectors. She finds fault with Western museums for buying on a wink and a nod and for not acknowledging the sins of the past. For example, she blames the British Museum for not telling visitors the full history of the Elgin Marbles, which would include the embarrassing detail that Lord Elgin’s permit to remove them from the Acropolis was issued by the ruling Ottoman authority, not the Greeks themselves, and arguably didn’t cover pieces affixed to the building. She also criticizes source nations for not protecting their heritage— whether due to a deficiency of will or a lack of resources—as well as for pressing for the return of objects that they often cannot properly conserve or display.

Apart from the author’s occasional digressions about her jet-setting lifestyle—such as her account of taking a breather at a friend’s house in St. Moritz—where Loot falls short is in offering solutions. Waxman is correct that “there are no easy answers here.” Although she touches on the subject throughout the book, only three pages of the conclusion are devoted to concrete proposals for actions going forward. That museums should confess their past transgressions is a useful idea. Similarly, Waxman is right about the need for better collaboration between museums and source nations, citing as models the Met’s ongoing sponsorship of Egyptian excavations and Italy’s recent agreements with U.S. museums. But more about those and other instances of cooperation—for example, where they are succeeding and where they are failing—and what additionally might be done would have been welcome. And although the book acknowledges the role of individuals, who today buy the vast majority of antiquities that come to the market, it doesn’t address how to permit private collecting while protecting archaeological sites.