First published in 1937, this eye-witness account of the Spanish Civil War was well worth disinterring. Borkenau, a Viennese by birth, had emigrated to France and later to Britain, partly to escape Hitler and partly, it seems, because of his disillusionment with communism. He writes as an observer with a liberal-leftist slant, basically in sympathy with the Spanish Republic but aware too of how the communists were gradually taking over power while shrewdly maintaining a facade of parliamentary liberalism. Barcelona he found to be, in effect, a worker's soviet; Valencia was more split and also bogged down in regionalism; Madrid was relatively bourgeois and liberal, at least outwardly. High-class reportage and lucid analysis make this account of special value, though Borkenau left Spain well before Franco's final triumph. There is an introduction by Hugh Thomas.