Hotel Florida

Review: A highly original and beautifully written account of the intrepid - and sometimes crazy - journalists who risked everything to report on the Spanish Civil War. Amanda Vaill has produced a work that is by turns gripping and heartbreaking, and utterly compelling Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana and A World on Fire Combining a historian's meticulous research with her accomplished skills as a biographer . Amanda Vaill tells the fascinating interwoven stories of three couples whose lives were forever changed as they fought for the last great cause in the Spanish Civil War Scott Donaldson, biographer of Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and Archibald MacLeish Vividly written and impeccably researched, Hotel Florida animates a fascinating cast of historical figures, speaking urgently to questions of truth and betrayal that are still compelling today. What a story Mary Dearborn, author of biographies of Norman Mailer, Peggy Guggenheim and a forthcoming life of Ernest Hemingway A wonderful, compulsively readable book that brings the extraordinary Spanish Civil War palpably to life Peter Stansky, author of Journey to the Frontier and The Unknown Orwell Vaill weaves through the artists' tangled lives as they capture this historic moment Vogue Magical and meticulous ... A masterful reconstruction of one of the most tumultuous conflicts in 20th Century Europe BBC