Title: Jumping the line
First published: 1998
Description: An eye-opening account of time served in the great battles of our century - for workers' rights, against Fascism, Communism, and racism - Jumping the Line is the life story of an American original.

William Herrick relates his adventures and misadventures on the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, in (and very much out of) the Communist Party, driving a tractor on a communal farm in Michigan, jumping the line as a hobo, organizing African American sharecroppers in Georgia, at work with Orson Welles, and immersed in his own writing.

When Paul Berman interviewed Herrick in the Village Voice in 1986, for the fiftieth anniversary of the Spanish Civil War, Herrick's remarks so incensed other veterans of the Abraham Lincoln battalion that they picketed the paper. What William Herrick has to say doesn't always go down easily. But for those who like the truth, with a dash of wit and a healthy dose of history, it can be exhilarating.
Subjects: American Novelists, Biography, History, Novelists, American, Radicalism, Radicalism in literature, Radicals, General, Literary, American, LITERARY CRITICISM, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY, Authors, biography, Spain, history, civil war, 1936-1939, personal narratives, New York Times reviewed, Spanish Civil War, Personal narratives
Places: United States, Spain
People: William Herrick (1915-)
Time periods: 20th century, 1936-1939
LC classification: PS3558.E75 Z47 1998