Tapping new sources for the first time, this must surely be considered the definitive work on Americans who fought and died for the Spanish Republic. Historian Carroll (It Seemed Like Nothing Happened, 1982, etc.) examines the trajectory of the 3,000 Americans who fought during the Spanish Civil War (193639). Though they were often called ``The Abraham Lincoln Brigade,'' this appellation, he notes, is not strictly correct. The first Americans to aid Republican Spain served in the Abraham Lincoln battalion of one of the International Brigades (composed of non-Spaniards), but this was only a fraction of all US volunteers. Still, the moniker gained currency to refer to all Americans who fought for the Republic. Carroll broadly traces the motivations of those who volunteered. Most, but not all, were Old Left Communists (the first detachment of Americans was recruited on the instructions of Moscow) who signed up to save a beleaguered socialist ally. Some felt that American democratic ideals were at stake as Fascists under Franco sought to overthrow the duly elected Socialist Popular Front. About one third of the volunteers were Jews, aware early on of the perils of Fascism. For all, Carroll says, the war became the most significant event of their lives. Carroll examines not only the battles (from the Americans' first appearance, when they were mistaken for Russians and saved Madrid from being overrun by Royalist Fascists) but also the soldiers' homecomings and their years as veterans. Many went on to aid US intelligence against the Fascists in the early days of WW II despite an order of neutrality from Russia. The story is brought down through their political activities of the McCarthy era and to the present day. With access to previously unattainable archives in Moscow and using extensive interviews and written material, Carroll tells a magnificent tale of hope, idealism, heroism, honor, death, and betrayal.
Pub Date: July 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8047-2276-5
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Stanford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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