Following Franco: Spanish Culture and Politics in Transition

differences by exploring issues relating to monetary policy, social work, food consumption, and children’s experiences in innovative ways. The fourth and final section, “Legacies of the Spanish Civil War, 1939–1944,” looks at soldiers’ experiences and military culture in the early 1940s. The three chapters comprising this section ultimately show, through their discussions of gender ideals, Blue Division soldiers, and veterans, that the official end of the Spanish war on April 1, 1939 did not set in motion a straightforward process of demobilization. Spanish society remained highly militarized, at least until the mid-1940s. To expand the chronological framework of this study on the Spanish war beyond 1939 makes perfect sense, in other words, and chimes with other recent research problematizing the notion of the 1940s in Spain as a “post-war” period. Overall, then, this anthology is a welcome addition to the English language historiography on the Spanish Civil War. It covers an impressively wide range of topics while still maintaining a sense of thematic coherence. The value of its multi-layered, holistic approach to social and military history is clearly on display, although the short lengths of individual chapters mean that we mostly—if understandably—get rather general descriptions of grassroots perspectives, as if summarized “from above,” rather than any direct sense of grassroots voices. It would also have been good to include a concluding section, summarizing and reflecting on the individual chapters’ main findings. Still, there is no doubt that the scholarship included here will benefit students and professional historians alike. The Spanish Civil War, as a subject of historical and historiographical debate, is still far from being exhausted. Carl-Henrik Bjerstr€ om University of Copenhagen chyb@hum.ku.dk