For over half a century, the history of the Abraham Lincoln brigade-the 2,800 young Americans who volunteered to fight for the Spanish Republic against General Francisco Franco's rebellion in 1936-has been shrouded in myth, legend, and controversy. Now, for the fist time, we have a comprehensive, objective, and deeply researched account of the brigade's experience in Spain and what happened to the survivors when they returned to the United States. (About one-third of the volunteers died in Spain). The book is largely based on previously unused sources, including the newly opened Russian archives, and more than 100 oral histories. The author charts the volunteers' motivations for enlisting in the fight against Spanish fascism and places their actions in the context of the Depression era. The battleground experiences of the brigade have never before been depicted in such vivid detail, and such battles as Jarama, Belchite, and the Ebro come alive in the participants' words. The author uses the military aspects of the war to illuminate such related issues as the influence of political ideology on military events and the psychology of a volunteer army. He also closely examines the role of the Communist party in the conduct of the war, including the "Orwell question"-allegations of a Communist reign of terror in Spain-and investigates the alleged racial problems within the brigade, the first fully integrated military unit in American history. The book continues the saga of the brigade by relating the problems of the surviving volunteers with the U.S. Army during World War II; their opposition to the Cold War, the Vietnam war, and U.S. intervention in Central America; the persecution during the Red Scare of the 1950s; and their involvement with the civil rights movement.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

Written with passion and intelligence, the letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in World War II express the raw idealism of anti-fascist soldiers who experienced the war in boot camps, cockpits, and foxholes, but never lost sight of the great global issues at stake.

When the United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941, only one group of American soldiers had already confronted the fascist enemy on the battlefield: the U.S. veterans of the Lincoln Brigade, a volunteer army of about 2,800 men and women who had enlisted to defend the Spanish Republic from military rebels during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). They fought on the losing side.

After Pearl Harbor, Lincoln Brigade veterans enthusiastically joined the U.S. Army, welcoming this second chance to fight against fascism. However, the Lincoln recruits soon encountered suspicious military leaders who questioned their patriotism and denied them promotions and overseas assignments, foreshadowing the political persecution of the postwar Red Scare. African American veterans who fought in fully integrated units in Spain, faced second-class treatment in America's Jim Crow army. Nevertheless, the Lincolns served with distinction in every theater of the war and won a disproportionate number of medals for courage, dedication, and sacrifice.

The 154 letters in this volume, selected from thousands held in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives at NYU's Tamiment Library, provide a new and unique perspective on aspects of World War II.

For over half a century, the history of the Abraham Lincoln brigade - the 2,800 young Americans who volunteered to fight for the Spanish Republic against General Francisco Franco's rebellion in 1936 - has been shrouded in myth, legend, and controversy. Now, for the first time, we have a comprehensive, objective, and deeply researched account of the brigade's experience in Spain and what happened to the survivors when they returned to the United States. (About one-third of the volunteers died in Spain.) The book is largely based on previously unused sources, including the newly opened Russian archives, and more than 100 oral histories. The author charts the volunteers' motivations for enlisting in the fight against Spanish fascism and places their actions in the context of the Depression era. The battleground experiences of the brigade have never before been depicted in such vivid detail, and such battles as Jarama, Belchite, and the Ebro come alive in the participants' words. The author uses the military aspects of the war to illuminate such related issues as the influence of political ideology on military events and the psychology of a volunteer army. He also closely examines the role of the Communist party in the conduct of the war, including the "Orwell question" - allegations of a Communist reign of terror in Spain - and investigates the alleged racial problems within the brigade, the first fully integrated military unit in American history. The book continues the saga of the brigade by relating the problems of the surviving volunteers with the U.S. army during World War II; their opposition to the Cold War, the Vietnam war, and U.S. intervention in Central America; theirpersecution during the Red Scare of the 1950's; and their involvement with the civil rights movement.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Foreword by E.L. Doctorow.

When the Spanish Civil War began in 1936, loosely affiliated groups of writers, artists, and other politically aware individuals emerged in New York City to give voice to anti-fascist sentiment by supporting the Spanish Republic. Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War examines the participation of New Yorkers in the political struggles and armed conflict that many historians consider a critical precursor to World War II. Nearly half of the 2,800 Americans who volunteered to fight in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade against Generalissimo Francisco Franco came from the New York area. Fundraising, propaganda, and deployment for anti-fascists everywhere in America were orchestrated through New York City. At the same time, powerful voices in New York expressed sympathy for the pro-fascist side.

The fighting in Spain brought to the surface the complex ideological and ethnic identities always present in New York politics. Facing Fascism examines the full range of this experience, including that of the New Yorkers who supported Franco. It addresses the role of doctors, nurses, and social workers who left New York hospitals to provide assistance to the defenders of the Spanish Republic, as well as those who remained active on the home front. The book also describes the involvement of students in the war, the key role of writers and the media, and the contributions made by members of New York's art and theater communities.

Facing Fascism also serves as the catalog to an exhibition of the same name appearing at the Museum of the City of New York in the spring of 2007. The book and exhibition both make use of theAbraham Lincoln Brigade Archives' extensive holdings, which range from historical documents to video recordings of oral histories. Numerous other libraries, archives, museums, and private collectors have also been consulted to make this the most complete exhibition of its kind ever mounted. The exhibition will also appear in Spain.

Peter Neil Carroll has written about place in America both as an historian and as a poet. His first book of poetry inspired further travels around the country exploring lost landscapes, history, and culture from the Black Hills and New Mexico desert to the Ohio Valley. These poems are presented here in his second collection A Child Turns Back to Wave: Poetry of Lost Places, winner of Prize Americana. Carroll's poems have appeared in Poetrybay, Written Rivers, Poetry Flash, Pacific Review, Sand Hill Review, Earthspeak, Review Americana, Blue Moon Literary Review, Monterey Poetry Review, and New Mexico Poetry Review. He has taught creative writing at the University of San Francisco and history at Stanford University.

At once memoir and meditation, "Keeping Time" records one professional historian's struggle to live in history even as he studies it, writes about it, and teaches it. Exploring the omnipresence of the past in American life today, Peter N. Carroll weaves into his autobiographical narrative a wealth of provocative observations on the practice of history, the connections between "small" lives and large forces, and the relationship of personal choice to public activity.

Carroll feels compelled to view the past in a different way--not as something remote from the present, but as a vital current in everyone's life. He strives to popularize history, reminding us that the particulars of ordinary life are indeed historical, that all human beings, however "obscure" or "important," exist in time, and that each must live in history.

The founding Fathers based the American system on principles of equality and freedom, but often people who made America their home faced inequality, injustice, and legal discrimination. The Free and the Unfree documents what happened when Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants, religious minorities, and women tested America's humanitarian and democratic principles. It surveys the social, cultural, political, and economic developments that broadened America's definition of freedom-from the earliest contacts with Native Americans and the Revolutionary War through the Civil Rights movement and the sexual revolution. The Free and the Unfree presents a concise, thorough, and up-to-date examination of the spirit and limits of freedom, providing readers with a little-known perspective on American history.

"This is the single best book on the 1970s." --Leo Ribuffo, George Washington University "A compelling and persuasive challenge to the journalistic characterization of the '70s as the 'Me Decade.'" --Ruth Rosen, University of California, Davis The title of Peter Carroll's book, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened, ironically reveals the message. The decade of the '70s was far from our common impression of the calm following the turbulent '60s. Instead, it was a time filled with dramatic events and changes. In this unique, comprehensive history of the 1970s, we learn about international developments: the war in Cambodia, Nixon's trip to China, the oil embargo and resulting gas shortage, the Mayaguez incident, the Camp David accords, the Iranian capture of the U.S. embassy and the taking of hostages, and the ill-fated rescue mission. All this signaled a decline in American power and influence. We also learn about domestic politics: Kent State, the Pentagon Papers, Haynsworth and Carswell, the Eagleton affair, the rise of ticket splitting, the Saturday night massacre, Nixon's resignation, the conservative shift in the Democratic Party, and the Reagan electoral landslide. Carroll reminds us of tragedies and occasional moments of levity, bringing up the names Patricia Hearst, George Jackson and Angela Davis, Wilbur Mills and the Argentina Firecracker, Wayne Hays and Elizabeth Ray, Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. Peter N. Carroll has taught at the University of Illinois, the University of Minnesota, and Stanford University. He is the author of The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

Written with passion and intelligence, the letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in World War II express the raw idealism of anti-fascist soldiers who experienced the war in boot camps, cockpits, and foxholes, but never lost sight of the great global issues at stake.

When the United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941, only one group of American soldiers had already confronted the fascist enemy on the battlefield: the U.S. veterans of the Lincoln Brigade, a volunteer army of about 2,800 men and women who had enlisted to defend the Spanish Republic from military rebels during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). They fought on the losing side.

After Pearl Harbor, Lincoln Brigade veterans enthusiastically joined the U.S. Army, welcoming this second chance to fight against fascism. However, the Lincoln recruits soon encountered suspicious military leaders who questioned their patriotism and denied them promotions and overseas assignments, foreshadowing the political persecution of the postwar Red Scare. African American veterans who fought in fully integrated units in Spain, faced second-class treatment in America's Jim Crow army. Nevertheless, the Lincolns served with distinction in every theater of the war and won a disproportionate number of medals for courage, dedication, and sacrifice.

The 154 letters in this volume, selected from thousands held in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives at NYU's Tamiment Library, provide a new and unique perspective on aspects of World War II.

The Spanish Civil War, a military rebellion supported by Hitler and Mussolini, attracted the greatest writers of the age. Among them were Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Andre Malraux, Arthur Koestler, Langston Hughes, and Martha Gellhorn. They returned to their homelands to warn the world about a war of fascist aggression looming on the horizon. Spain's cause drew 35,000 volunteers from 52 countries, including 2,800 Americans who formed the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Eight hundred Americans lost their lives. Of them, Hemingway wrote, "no men entered earth more honourably than those who died in Spain." Writers and soldiers alike saw Spain as the first battlefield of World War II. In the title essay of this book, historian Peter N. Carroll traces the war's legacy, from the shocking bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by German and Italian air forces to the attacks on civilians and displacement of refugees in later wars. Carroll's work focuses on both the personal and political motives that led seemingly ordinary Americans to risk their lives in a foreign war. Based on extensive oral histories of surviving veterans and original archival work-including material in the once-secret Moscow archives-the essays, some never before published, present forty years of scholarship. A portrait of three American women illustrates the growing awareness of a fascist threat to our home front. Other pieces examine the role of ethnicity, race, and religion in prompting Americans to set off for war. Carroll also examines the lives of war survivors. Novelist Alvah Bessie became a screenwriter and emerged as one of the blacklisted "Hollywood Ten." Ralph Fasanella went from union organizing to becoming one of the country's significant "outsider" painters. Hank Rubin won fame as a food connoisseur and wine columnist. And one volunteer, the African American Sgt. Edward Carter, earned a Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism in World War II. Most famously, Ernest Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls. His sharp criticism of the film version of the novel, in a series of private letters published here for the first time in book form, reveals his deep commitment to the antifascist cause. For those who witnessed the war in Spain, the defeat of democracy remained, in the words of Albert Camus, "a wound in the heart." From Guernica to Human Rights is essential reading for anyone interested in the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath.