Spain in Mind: An Anthology

KLIATT - Daniel Levinson

With students traveling all over the world these days, the idea behind this series is a good one: to give students a quick cultural history of a country they're studying or visiting. One of eight currently in the series (others include France, Italy, and Mexico), this volume on Spain includes some fine writing, but many may find it (as I did) way too heavily weighted toward pieces written long ago. It includes some wonderful writers (Hemingway, Henry James, Jan Morris, Somerset Maugham) and a nice mix of shorter and longer pieces, and fiction and nonfiction (and even some poetry). But it could really use subcategories in its organization (Calvin Trillin followed by Anthony Trollope?) instead of just one piece after another with little seeming order. Also, something many visitors could use is some more recent reportage/impressions of a country that is vastly different than it was even a few decades ago. To my mind this book is better in theory than execution, but it still might be one language departments will want to have on hand as a reference source. Reviewer: Daniel Levinson