Homage to Catalonia, his firsthand account of the Spanish Civil War, in my twenties. That latter book had been a major influence on my second book, Savage Dreams, for its example of honesty about the shortcomings of one’s own side and loyalty to it anyway and of how to incorporate into a political narrative personal experience all the way down to doubts and discomforts—that is, how to make room for the small and subjective inside something big and historic. He had been one of my principal literary influences,
