Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia was written by George Orwell and published in 1938. It's difficult to imagine the time. It was in Spain, during it's civil war in the years leading up to WWII. It's a fascinating first-person historical account, but it's also Orwell so it's well written. The best sentence in the book is not about Spain but about England, written to describe it upon Orwell's return home.

"The industrial towns were far away, a smudge of smoke and misery hidden by the curve of the earth's surface."