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War Is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War
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War Is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War Hardcover - 2008

by James Neugass

Neugass, an American ambulance driver in the Spanish Civil War, chronicled his service as a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. This newly discovered journal of his experience on the front lines is being published for the first time.


From the publisher

The newly discovered journal of an award-winning poet's experience on the front lines as a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade--All Quiet on the Western Front for the Spanish Civil War

In 1937, James Neugass, a poet and novelist praised in the New York Times, joined 2,800 other passionate young Americans who traveled to Spain as part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade--an unlikely mix of artists, journalists, industrial workers, and intellectuals united in their desire to combat European fascism.

Although rumors persisted over the years that Neugass had written a memoir, the manuscript of War Is Beautiful, a nuanced and deeply poetic chronicle of his service as an ambulance driver, did not come to light for sixty years, until a bookseller discovered it among papers in a New England house once occupied by the radical critic and editor Max Eastman. The memoir combines fast-paced accounts of darting onto battlefields to pick up the wounded with elegiac renderings of days spent on alert in an ever-changing series of sharply observed Spanish towns, enduring that most difficult of wartime activities: waiting.

Published now for the first time, War Is Beautiful is poised to take its place alongside works by Erich Maria Remarque, Irne Nmirovsky, Wilfred Owen, and George Orwell as a transcendent contemporaneous rendering of wartime life. It includes some of Neugass's own photos taken while in Spain.

Details

  • Title War Is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War
  • Author James Neugass
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition First edition
  • Pages 336
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher New Press, New York
  • Date 2008
  • Illustrated Yes
  • ISBN 9781595584274 / 1595584277
  • Weight 1.34 lbs (0.61 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.46 x 6.22 x 1.02 in (24.03 x 15.80 x 2.59 cm)
  • Themes
    • Chronological Period: 1930's
    • Cultural Region: Spanish
  • Library of Congress subjects Authors, Spain - History - Civil War, 1936-1939
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2008023065
  • Dewey Decimal Code B

Media reviews

Citations

  • Booklist, 11/15/2008, Page 16
  • Kirkus Reviews, 09/15/2008, Page 989
  • Library Journal, 10/01/2008, Page 83
  • London Review of Books, 09/24/2009, Page 11

About the author

Peter Glazer is an associate professor of directing and performance studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a professional director and playwright and sits on the executive committee of the governing board of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. He is a co-editor (with Peter N. Carroll) of War Is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War (The New Press). Born in New Orleans, James Neugass (1905-1949) attended Yale, Harvard, and Oxford and worked as a book reviewer, shoe salesman, social worker, and fencing coach before shipping off to Spain. His novel Rain of Ashes was accepted for publication shortly before his death in 1949 of a heart attack in the Sheridan Square subway station. His wartime journal was published posthumously as War Is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War (The New Press) in 2008. Peter N. Carroll has taught history at Stanford University since 1983. He is a co-editor (with Peter Glazer) of War Is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War (The New Press).
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War Is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War
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War Is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War

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