"The Spanish Civil War was fought from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939 between the Republicans, who were loyal to the established Spanish Republic, and the Nationalists, a rebel group led by General Francisco Franco. The Nationalists prevailed, and Franco ruled Spain for the next 36 years, from 1939 until his death in 1975."--Wikipedia.

"In 1937 James Neugass, a promising thirty-two-year-old poet and novelist who had already been praised in the New York Times and The Nation, joined 2,800 other passionate and idealistic young Americans who traveled to Spain as part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade - an unlikely mix of students, artists, journalists, industrial workers, and intellectuals united in their desire to combat European fascism. Working as an ambulance driver for Dr. Edward Barsky, the legendary American surgeon, Neugass volunteered in Spain during a critical turning point in the war, as Republicans and Fascists battled for control over the strategic ally important city of Teruel." "Ever the writer, Neugass seized any quiet, candlelit moment in a frontline hospital or the driver's seat of his ambulance to work on the powerfully honest and insightful chronicle of his service that would become War Is Beautiful. The memoir combines fast-paced accounts of darting onto battlefields to rescue the wounded and the dead with elegiscal renderings of days spent "on alert" in an ever-changing series of sharply observed Spanish towns, enduring that most difficult of wartime activities: waiting." "Nuanced and deeply lyrical, War Is Beautiful offers a rare, authentic glimpse into one of history's most tragic military conflicts. Although Neugass survived several shrapnel wounds and eventually left Spain, he died soon after his return to New York, leaving behind a widow and two young sons. His manuscript remained lost for the next sixty years until it turned up in a used bookshop in Vermont Published now for the first time, and including some of Neugass's own photos of the war in Spain, War Is Beautiful is poised to take its place alongside works by Erich Maria Remarque, Irene Nemkovsky, Wilfred Owen, and George Orwell as a transcendent contemporaneous rendering of wartime life."--BOOK JACKET.

"On April 20, 1914, in the small railroad town of Ludlow, Colorado, striking coalminers and state National Guardsmen waged a day-long battle that ended with the burning of a strikers' tent colony. The "Ludlow Massacre," as it is known, was only part of a seven-month war in which at least seventy-five people were killed. In Blood Passion, journalist Scott Martelle explores this largely forgotten American saga of coalminers rising against political and economic corruption, a fight that embraced some of the most volatile social movements of the early twentieth century."--Cover.

“A shotgun blast of revisionism that aims to shatter all the comfortable myths of American political discourse.” — Los Angeles Times From the bestselling author of A People's History of the United States comes this selection of passionate, honest, and piercing essays looking at American political ideology. Howard Zinn brings to Passionate Declarations the same astringent style and provocative point of view that led more than a million people to buy his book A People's History of the United States. He directs his critique here to what he calls "American orthodoxies" —that set of beliefs guardians of our culture consider sacrosanct: justifications for war, cynicism about human nature and violence, pride in our economic system, certainty of our freedom of speech, romanticization of representative government, confidence in our system of justice. Those orthodoxies, he believes, have a chilling effect on our capacity to think independently and to become active citizens in the long struggle for peace and justice.

A gripping and original account of how the Civil War began and a second American revolution unfolded, setting Abraham Lincoln on the path to greatness and millions of slaves on the road to freedom. An epic of courage and heroism beyond the battlefields, 1861 introduces us to a heretofore little-known cast of Civil War heroes—among them an acrobatic militia colonel, an explorer’s wife, an idealistic band of German immigrants, a regiment of New York City firemen, a community of Virginia slaves, and a young college professor who would one day become president. Their stories take us from the corridors of the White House to the slums of Manhattan, from the waters of the Chesapeake to the deserts of Nevada, from Boston Common to Alcatraz Island, vividly evoking the Union at its moment of ultimate crisis and decision. Hailed as “exhilarating….Inspiring…Irresistible…” by The New York Times Book Review, Adam Goodheart’s bestseller 1861 is an important addition to the Civil War canon. Includes black-and-white photos and illustrations.