Washington's New Poor Law

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Interviews with the ``Lincolns''--members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War--on the occasion of their 50th anniversary return to Spain in 1986 provide a first-hand, first-rate work of nonfiction about the reasons people voluntarily go ``up in arms.'' At a time when the Depression had demoralized Americans, the civil war in Spain was considered ``the good fight,'' supported by members of the literary world--John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, Andre Malraux and George Orwell, among others; the troops included men and women (including one who fought for the right to drive an ambulance), whites and blacks (such as Commander Oliver Law, the first black man in history to lead an integrated army); most of them were untrained for any kind of battle. Katz and Crawford record terrible moments: the bombing of Guernica, the on-the-spot shooting of Lincolns by fascists and the imprisonment of many others. Rendering the information vividly, the narrative has an immediacy from its many eyewitness accounts; photographs on every page give this book further accessibility, ensuring that it never becomes simply a roster of facts. Ages 10-up. (June)