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The Spanish Civil War: Revised Edition (Modern Library Paperbacks) | 
 enlarge | Author: Hugh Thomas
Publisher: Modern Library
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 100179
Media: Paperback
Edition: Rev Upd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 1120
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 1.5
ISBN: 0375755152
Dewey Decimal Number: 946.081
EAN: 9780375755156
ASIN: 0375755152
Publication Date: December 4, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 4 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: R20090106234421H
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Product Description
A masterpiece of the historian’s art, Hugh Thomas’s The Spanish Civil War remains the best, most engrossing narrative of one of the most emblematic and misunderstood wars of the twentieth century. Revised and updated with significant new material, including new revelations about atrocities perpetrated against civilians by both sides in this epic conflict, this "definitive work on the subject" (Richard Bernstein, The New York Times) has been given a fresh face forty years after its initial publication in 1961. In brilliant, moving detail, Thomas analyzes a devastating conflict in which the hopes, dreams, and dogmas of a century exploded onto the battlefield. Like no other account, The Spanish Civil War dramatically reassembles the events that led a European nation, in a continent on the brink of world war, to divide against itself, bringing into play the machinations of Franco and Hitler, the bloodshed of Guernica, and the deeply inspiring heroics of those who rallied to the side of democracy. Communists, anarchists, monarchists, fascists, socialists, democrats -- the various forces of the Spanish Civil War composed a fabric of the twentieth century itself, and Thomas masterfully weaves the diffuse and fascinating threads of the war together in a manner that has established the book as a genuine classic of modern history.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 Long on facts, short on insight, and a chore to read August 8, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Hugh Thomas's book is a great source, but I found it a difficult read. If you need more information on various characters, this book is for you. If you want to get a greater understanding of the events and timeline, do NOT make this your first choice.
He does an excellent job tracking the changing faces on the republican side, and the international diplomacy around the war. But political backstabbing and diplomatic skulduggery get tedious after a while. He discusses the more significant campaigns in passing, but almost as though this was just a backdrop for the politics and diplomacy. He covers the high points and low points of both sides' conduct, but can't keep out his pro-republican sentiments - and won't admit them, either. The republicans might round up political prisoners, and eventually execute a lot of them on trumped-up charges, but the nationalists engaged in ruthless repression, murdering their political enemies. I would say that he does try to explain to the secularist how much of a threat many Spaniards felt from the attack on the Church. He downplays many of the statements from the republican government on this issue, and he treats the Church in most of the discussions as merely another political party, so it doesn't go as far as it might. And a favorite of mine, he does go into some economic figures which are, at least in my opinion, critical in understanding many wars. He clearly demonstrates the tough times the nationalists were having with their command economy and the republicans with their hodgepodge of independent states and collectivist ventures.
And there are then the quirks which I found made the book hard to read. He spells "jail" in the older English way -"gaol" - which, for an Englishman in the 1950's is understandable, but that takes a toll. He spells Hungarian names with umlauts, but not German ones, preferring the added -e. But then in footnots, the umlauts are there. Huh? He also uses some nearly-German grammar at times, with sentences like "on this day died Durrutti". He only roughly proceeds in chronological order, so one understands politics 8 months at a time, and then reads about two months of fighting, and then 14 months of diplomacy, and then the ninth month of politics. This makes for very difficult reading and understanding of the relationships between the events.
And finally, the lack of insight. A reporter is someone who goes and find facts and relays them. Historians show the relationship of those events in the sequence of time to other events. He keeps saying that there is always the threat of war and various actions were made to avoid greater war, but never explains how/why wider war might have resulted -- just trust him. He clearly shows how the collectivist venture failed in Spain, but then dismisses it with a wave of the hand, because the war detracted from work. Well, did it or does collectivism fail everywhere? And how did the nationalists become 'fascists', and how did their economic policies differ from the republic's? It seemed like a golden opportunity to point out that fascism is a form of socialism, but he missed it. And that the nationalists are 'fascists' is a given, with no proof nor with any examples of decisions that ideology made them take.
Overall, I'd have to say good reference, but poor reader. It really is more like a collection of newspaper clippings than like a history.
 Replacement copy for beat-up original editon of the title. February 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Hugh Thomas's THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR is probably the best account of this tragic episode in Spain's history, and this revised edition hopefully expands and corrects the original edition, published in 1961. The paperback edition should make this classic readily available at a reasonable price.
An easy to understand narrative of the Spanish Civil War June 21, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Hugh Thomas account of the Spanish Civil War is the most thorough version of the events written to date. His writing style makes the reader believe the entire account could be fiction. It is very easy to read and you hardly feel like you are reading history at all. The Spanish Civil War is one of the most devastating conflicts of the 20th century. It is the precursor to World War II and showcased as well as trained some of Germany, Italy and Russia's top talent. The sheer devastation of tactics involved bullied a civilian population and decimated a country. The rise of Francisco Franco and his victory over the communists was made possible by fascist intervention. The democracies of the world worked hard to try and effect a peace but they were unsuccessful against the determination of the fascists and the communists to prolong the conflict. This is a complicated conflict to understand but Hugh Thomas tries to simplify it as much as he can. This is the best start to understanding the Spanish Civil War and for those who want to understand how World War II began.
 The Spanish Civil War: Revised Edition (Modern Library Paperbacks) November 9, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Hugh Thomas combines sound judgment with extensive research. The result is a history that tells you what you want to know and what you need to know.
SPANISH CIVIL WAR PRIMER June 20, 2006
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
As the 70th Anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War is approaching this writer is reviewing some important works that militants should read in order to draw the lessons of the defeat of the Spanish revolution. The writer has been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since he was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.
Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class-consciousness of the Spanish proletariat was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Mr. Thomas' history of the period, if only indirectly, gives some answers to the reasons for that failure.
When I say indirectly I mean just that. Mr. Thomas's history is strong on the main events, actions and points of the struggle. Militants, unfamiliar with the events of the Spanish Civil War can profitably use this history as a basic reader. However, if a militant is seeking to draw the lessons of the Spanish Civil War this book is not an adequate source and he or she must look elsewhere. Furthermore, Mr. Thomas makes no pretense to offer such a perspective and this writer would argue that he was hostile to any perspective but the view of high European, especially British, governmental politics. Fair enough. There is still plenty of basic information to be gleaned from this work.
The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Mr. Thomas' work analyzes those policies. Unfortunately, he is not sensitive to the base of society that actually fought, endured or fled the war. What Mr. Thomas does find is the furious nature of the struggle in Spanish society between the old agrarian- based economy and the newer capitalist- based economy; the religious tensions caused by the breakup of the old agrarian society and the tensions between believers and church-burners; the struggle between centralizers and federalists which formed the core of the unresolved national questions, especially in Catalonia; the intense political struggles within the broad sections that supported both left and right, especially the role of the Stalinist police apparatus; the international ideological political factors that played a role, if not as erroneously assumed the decisive factor; and, finally, the burning personal antagonisms that in a civil war pit brother against brother, family against family, town against town, etc.. With the caveat mentioned above-read on.
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