Former library loan. dust jacket has some tears and fading. Customer service is our goal! Additional Details ------------------------------ Product description: KIRKUS REVIEW The best biography to date (not saying much) of the Generalissimo, who emerges as a quintessential Spaniard and a self-disciplined, not unenlightened despot. Franco was born in 1892 into an ingrown family of administrators on an ingrown naval base on the Galician coast. The military-patriotic virtues he absorbed as a cadet carried him to North Africa, a generalship at 33, and a prominent role in the suppression of the Asturian revolutionaries. He committed himself curiously late to the anti-Republican coalition which he came to dominate-though (or because) he was never a monarchist or a radical fascist. The Civil War is reviewed at but it is the first and last parts of the book which offer the greatest value and the most controversy. Hill uses newly available archives and ""surprisingly frank"" interviews with dramatis personae from Franco on down. He stresses Franco's refusal to ally himself with Hitler, and his success in saving Sephardic Jews. The 50's saw the end of UN excommunication, and the beginning of military collaboration with the U.S. By '66 much economic progress (not all due to American aid and tourism, says Hill) and a new constitution. The book will confound liberal reflexes at times it does seem a subtle whitewash; certainly Hill ignores the brutal putdown of strikers, the reactionary side of Opus Dei, the hypocrisy of Minister Fraga. And he sketches the structural features of the government too casually. But the book is cool, well-written and plausible enough to raise the level of discussion about Spain from name-calling to informed debate.