Recently I've had a couple of different conversations with people about authors and the authors' political slants. This led me to dig up an old book and give it a fresh look. The book is Voices Against Tyranny Writing of the Spanish Civil War - on the 50th anniversary of the event.

This book initially came out in 1986 and contains excerpts from such notables as W.H. Auden, Ernest Hemingway, Federico García Lorca, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Pablo Picasso, and others. The writings were all written near or during the Spanish Civil War. Although the world is in a new phase and wars in other locations are foremost on Americans minds, these voices still contain relevant commentary.

Some sections of this book are personal and provide the reader with enough visual information so that one can really picture the scenes described. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's piece "Barcelona and Madrid" describe in vivid detail the sound and feel of bullets hitting nearby walls while watching the bombardment of Madrid. Meanwhile, others such as Stephen Spender and Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote poetry to convey their sentiments.

In one section, "Authors Take Sides", writers from the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the U.S.A. contribute their points of view. It makes for interesting reading - while some prevaricate and others, such as Hemingway, write their opinions quite directly and concisely.

When I initially pulled the book off of my bookshelf, I simply wanted to find information about one author in particular. Instead I found myself drawn to reading much of it again. I think, for me, the pull is precisely because it contains so many different aspects. There are expressions in poetry, in essay, and in memoir. What this allows the reader is a window into different perspectives and each author's unique approach to conveying them. The total result is a more complete scene to the reader about how war affects so many in different ways. And, sadly, trying to understand that is still relevant today.

Julia Eussen is currently pursuing her M.A. at Eastern Michigan University in the Written Communication Program. She is also an Assistant Organizer for the Ann Arbor Classics Book Group. She can be reached at jeussen at emich dot edu.