From 1936 to 1939, the Spanish Civil War dominated headlines around the world. Volunteers from more than 50 countries rushed to help Spain’s democratically elected government fight an uprising by right-wing army officers backed by Hitler and Mussolini. Some 2,800 of the volunteers were Americans, the only time so many of our countrymen—and women—have taken part in another nation’s civil war. Adam Hochschild gives an illustrated talk about some of the Americans caught up in this conflict.

Adam Hochshild is the author of eight books, including Spain in Our Hearts: Americans and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (2016), King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (1998), and Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (2005), which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN USA Literary Award, the Gold Medal of the California Book Awards, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has twice been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Earlier in his career, he was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, a commentator on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” and an editor and writer at Mother Jones. In 2009 he received the Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award from the American Historical Association, and in 2014 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Part of Memory of Fire: The Spanish Civil War 80 Years After, a linked lecture, exhibit and film series organized by Anthony Geist (Spanish and Comparative Literature), Glennys Young (History), Susan Glenn (History), and Mark Jenkins (Drama).