The Bombing of Guernica – What Was Its Meaning & Importance?

World War 2 remains notorious for the frequency of bombs used during the conflict. Bombs, conventional and atomic, blasted places like Hiroshima, London, Tokyo, and many cities in Germany. Because of the horror and scale of the damage, these places overshadow, to some extent, what happened in the Spanish town of Guernica on April 26 […]

Review of A Long Petal of the Sea, by Isabel Allende

A Long Petal of the Sea is a recent historical novel from Isabel Allende. It appeared in Spain in 2019 and in the US in 2020. To read my other recent book reviews, you can check out: This Tender Land, by William Kent Krueger The Impossible Girl, by Lydia Kang The Da Vinci Code, by […]

George Orwell and the Spanish Civil War

Today I was reminded of one of my favorite stories from history, George Orwell and the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, the Spanish Civil War began. On one side were the forces of the slightly left-of-center elected Spanish government, on the other, the hard-right fascist rebels of general Francisco Franco. After the war began, various […]