From the murder of poet Federico García Lorca by fascists at the onset of Franco's coup to Ernest Hemingway's experiences with the international brigades on the front lines along the Ebro river, this volume chronologically retells the story of the Spanish Civil War through the experiences of writers, artists, and musicians involved in the conflict, mostly on the republican/leftist side of the conflict. In addition to the two figures just mentioned, other individuals discussed in the book include communist war correspondent Arthur Koestler; Pablo Picasso, whose famous painting, Guernica, memorialized the fascist air-bombing of the town of the same name; writer George Orwell (Eric Blair), who fought with the P.O.U.M., a Marxist militia; Esmond Romilly, a British socialist who fought with the international brigades; journalist Martha Gellhorn, who accompanied Hemingway to Spain and reported on the conflict for Collier's Weekly; and surrealist painter Salvador Dali, whose perceived insufficient opposition to fascism and eventual decision to live in Spain under Francoist rule was a bone of bitter contention for many of his former colleagues. Distributed in the US by Casemate. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)