First published in France in 1961 as La Rvolution et la guerre dEspagne, this book explains the major issues of the Spanish Civil War in a remarkably clear and comprehensive fashion. The authors focus on the internal affairs of the Republic and the Anarchist collective experiments in particular. For further description, the book is best served by its critics:The BrouTmime work is the best general interpretation available concerning both the revolution of 1936 and the war. It is especially valuable for analysis of the CNT, the POUM, and the anarchists in both the industrial and rural areas of Catalonia. It contains rich chapters on the first days of the war in the large cities and on the May, 1937, struggle in the streets of Barcelona.Gabriel Jackson, Hispanic American Historical ReviewThis, by contrast (with the work of Hugh Thomas), is what gives weight to the fine works of Pierre Brou: the effort by which he constructs a Spanish war where events, parties, and man, the motives that guided them, the difficulties they encountered, their feelings, debates, ideas, and sacrifices are arranged and told in order to make them comprehensible.JeanPierre Peter, Annales: Economies, Socits, CivilisationsBrou has prepared the first half [of the book], dealing with the Spanish background, the revolution, and the first year of the war... [He] gives a particularly good treatment of the origins of the Spanish Communist party.In the second half of this composite work, Tmime has presented a clear, concise, and perceptive account of the military events in the last two years of the war and of the construction of Francos authoritarian state.Stanley G. Payne, Journal of Modern History