I can highly recommend "Homage to Catalonia". It's a really insightful look into the world of the Communist revolutionaries and the anti-Fascist front-lines in

I can highly recommend "Homage to Catalonia". It's a really insightful look into the world of the Communist revolutionaries and the anti-Fascist front-lines in the early 20th century. In fact, it's a really good look into similar political movements all the way up through today. It's also a very good first-hand account of war in multiple environments and the sections on urban warfare in Barcelona reminded me of the scenes of warfare in Baghdad during the Iraq war. Some people find the writing about all of the factions confusing and hard to track, but I think that's on purpose. I think being there, it would have been confusing as well. I read it a few years before actually making it to Barcelona and the description of the city came back to me in a flood as I was spending time in it. I hadn't realized how well he had described the look at feel of the city but the image I drew in my mind while I read the book was almost exactly what it actually looks like in many parts. Orwell had an amazing ability to evoke complex settings in surprisingly sparse and unadorned language.