Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host, Russ Roberts, of Sholem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

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Today is July 28, 2025, and my guest is Professor of English and author David Wyatt of the University of Maryland.

He teaches and writes about 20th century American literature, including Ernest Hemingway.

Our topic for today is Hemingway's novel, for whom the bell tolls.

David, welcome to e-com talk.

Thanks for having me, Russ. Happy to be here. I want to let listeners know that there will be some spoilers. So if you want to enjoy the book without those, please read it before you listen to this

episode. Now, the novel set in the Spanish Civil War, which isn't even 100 years old, but is probably forgotten by many.

Give us a thumbnail sketch of the war.

What was it about?

And what was Hemingway's involvement?

You can see the Spanish Civil War as a run-up to World War II, a proxy war in which various countries took sides in the initial fight between fascism and democracy.

It took place in Spain from 1936 to 1939, and it was a war that was perhaps timed at that point in history because Spain

had never had its French Revolution. In France, it was a class war as well. The military, the

aristocracy, the church, the bankers on one side, and a whole array of the different class of persons on the other.

France kept fighting this war, you might say, for the next 150 years.

Spain never had such an outbreak.

And so, in some sense, the pressures that were released in France and in Germany and Italy in the 19th century

...