ABSTRACT
No one actually wrote these words, but there are about 3,000 books or pamphlets about the Spanish Civil War made up of paragraphs in the genre, and many thousand newspaper articles. Nearly all are so repetitious and ephemeral, however, that a singleminded researcher can get through them at the rate of about 40 a day and, by listing all of them in his bibliography, can gain a swift reputation for great learning. About half a dozen of these books are worth reading carefully for their own sake even now, and the best of these is Homage to Catalonia. It is written with great lucidity and sincerity. It is very perceptive about war. Nevertheless it is very misleading about the Spanish Civil War.
