"La guerra civil" de Paul Preston es uno de los textos de referencia sobre el conflicto que asoló España entre 1936 y 1939 y marcó el resto del siglo XX. Ahora, cuando se cumplen ochenta años del golpe de estado que desencadenó la guerra, Preston, uno de los hispanistas de mayor prestigio internacional, actualiza y amplía su estudio incorporando tanto las últimas investigaciones y polémicas historiográficas como abundante material inédito. Imprescindible para conocer la violenta realidad que asoló España, este libro contribuye a conservar un relato común de aquella tragedia colectiva, algo esencial para el ejercicio cotidiano de la democracia. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION The definitive work on the Spanish Civil War, a classic of modern historical scholarship and a masterful narrative. Paul Preston is the world's foremost historian of Spain. This surging history recounts the struggles of the 1936 war in which more than 3,000 Americans took up arms. Tracking the emergence of Francisco Franco's brutal (and, ultimately, extraordinarily durable) fascist dictatorship, Preston assesses the ways in which the Spanish Civil War presaged the Second World War that ensued so rapidly after it. The attempted social revolution in Spain awakened progressive hopes during the Depression, but the conflict quickly escalated into a new and horrific form of warfare. As Preston shows, the unprecedented levels of brutality were burned into the American consciousness as never before by the revolutionary war reporting of Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Herbert Matthews, Vincent Sheean, Louis Fischer, and many others. Completely revised, including previously unseen material on Franco's treatment of women in wartime prisons, The Spanish Civil War is a classic work on this pivotal epoch in the twentieth century.