For Whom the Bell Tolls

In 1937, Hemingway arrived in Spain to cover the Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance. He filed his dispatches, but the real fruit of those years was the story of Robert Jordan, an American fighting with anti-fascist guerillas in the mountains of Spain. The story tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, the tragic death of an ideal. It lives for us because of the great disillusionment that grew out of WW II, a war frought with such high hopes and concluded so cynically with a former ally gobbling up half of the Europe we hoped to liberate.