The Spanish Civil War has long been the stuff of legend. Thousands of brave young men from all over the Western world, most of them organized by their local Communist parties, rushed to Spain to support the democratic Republic against right-wing forces led by rebellious generals in the Spanish officer corps. Although the Republic was eventually defeated, some observers believed that the effort to defend it was a selfless undertaking of the international Communist movement and the Soviet Union -- a noble crusade against Hitler, Mussolini, and their Spanish puppet Franco. This book presents a very different view of the role of the Soviet Union in this war. Based on previously unavailable Moscow archives, it provides the first full documentation of that country's duplicitous and self-serving activities. Documents in the book reveal that the Soviet Union not only swindled the Spanish Republic out of millions of dollars through arms deals but also sought to take over and run the Spanish economy, government, and armed forces in order to make Spain a Soviet possession, thereby effectively destroying the foundations of authentic Spanish antifascism. The documents also shed light on many other disputed episodes of the war: the timing of the Republican request for assistance from the Soviet Union; the rise and fall of the International Brigades; the internal workings of the Comintern and its influence on Spain; and much more. Authoritative and startling in the new information it offers, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in Soviet foreign policy or the Spanish Civil War.

Tracing the Democratic Party's dramatic shift to the left over the last thirty years and its concurrent demise, a scholar proposes that the Democrats will never be able to recapture the strength of the New Deal. "This book briskly recounts the Democratic Party's leftward lurch during the tumultuous 1960s and the subsequent decline of liberalism as a vital force in our nation's political life." —Will Marshall, President, Progressive Policy Institute.

Ronald Radosh's earliest memory is of being trundled off to May Day celebrations by his communist parents with a Soviet flag stuck in his baby carriage. Then came education at New York's ''little red schoolhouse.'' Summers at ''commie camp.'' And college at the University of Wisconsin where he became a founding father of the New Left. Commies is a brilliant memoir of growing up in the culture of radicalism. But it also about the hard decisions faced by those professing a radical faith. For Radosh himself, the crisis came when he concluded in his authoritative book on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg that the couple (on whose behalf he had demonstrated as a boy) had indeed been guilty of spying. Attacked as a ''traitor,'' Radosh began to question his political commitments. His disillusionment climaxed in the 1980s when he traveled through Central America as a journalist and historian and ran into his old comrades there still searching for the revolution. One journalist calls Ronald Radosh ''the Zelig of the American Left, seen everywhere and knowing everyone.'' Humorous and tragic, filled with anecdote and personality, Commies is a trip log of his journey, the most intimate look yet at the experience of a radical generation.

First published in 1975, Prophets on the Right examines the views of five conservative critics of American foreign policy from the 1930s to the Cold War era. This new edition contains an introduction in which the author explains how his recent political reorientation, from left to right, has affected his interpretation of the views of the "prophets."