From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Koch's new biographic history surveys the Spanish Civil War, the decline of literary modernism, the train wreck otherwise known as Ernest Hemingway's love life and the waning career of John Dos Passos—all while plotting the moral highs and lows of 1930s American and European intellectuals, politicos and revolutionaries. This is heady stuff, made headier still by Koch's revelation that the hand pulling each of these narrative threads belongs to no less a villain than Joseph Stalin. Far from spinning conspiracy theories, Koch coolly examines scholarship, memoirs and archival material that place Stalin's propaganda operatives at the heart of almost every relationship, argument and scene rendered in these masterful chapters. Chief among the affairs is the unraveling friendship between Hemingway and Dos Passos, two literary titans who spent the years of the Spanish Civil War in opposing slides toward (Hemingway) and away from (Dos Passos) the ideologies of well-meaning leftists. There may be no "elevator pitch" for Koch's book, no single phrase to utter in the ear of a film producer that would take this story from page to screen, and that's too bad, because Koch (former head of the Writing Division at Columbia) reaps enough death, sex, booze and intrigue from his subject to feed an Oscar contender. But the best part is really Koch himself. Present in the narrative as a historical detective, connecting the dots between his various sources, Koch also excels as a literary critic, one who loves books that are morally nuanced and gets brilliantly angry when the authors he respects ruin their talents by committing themselves to shortsighted ideological points. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The New York Sun
"Vivid and penetrating... [The Breaking Point] has the pace and drama of a detective novel... One of the very best."

The Denver Post
"A riveting tale of soured friendships, casually exterminated lives, and treachery run amok."

Harper's
"The Breaking Point [is] stampede reading...a furious choosing of sides in the bloody past, back when history was breaking hearts."

Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"A deeply thoughtful, trenchant examination... A whopping good literary tale...explored here by a master of the literary and the political."

Library Journal
"[A] riveting account of a time when personality, ideology, and war all collided."

Book Description
When John Dos Passos walked into Ernest Hemingway's room in the Florida Hotel in Madrid, the air was thick with tension. Hemingway was fuming; Dos Passos was caught off guard. They were there to witness the Spanish Civil War firsthand, but something more personal was going on: as Spain was unraveling thread by thread, so was their friendship. Dos Passos was widely regarded as the literary voice of America's new socially engaged generation-his face had been on the cover of Time the week the war broke out. And he had long considered Hemingway one of his best friends. Yet they were completely opposite in personality, with Dos Passos's calm temperament and mild manner standing in stark contrast to Hemingway's machismo. Dos Passos was probably oblivious even to Hemingway's envy of him-an envy that was soon to erupt into full-blown resentment. They had arrived in Spain as comrades, leftist writers-in-arms. But when Dos Passos went looking for his close friend JosŽ Robles-a Spanish-born Johns Hopkins professor who had moved back to Spain to help save the Spanish Republic-Robles was nowhere to be found. Dos Passos's search for Robles would eventually take his literary career and his friendship with Hemingway to the breaking point. In this stunning historical narrative, acclaimed writer Stephen Koch explores the short time the two men shared in Spain, and how their split changed the life and work of each man-and changed the course of American literature itself. A real-life literary mystery written with a novelist's eye for detail, The Breaking Point is the story of two lives at the intersection of friendship and murder, of love and death, and of literature and history.

From the Back Cover
Praise for The Breaking Point "The Breaking Point is literary and political history that belongs alongside Homage to Catalonia and the best biographies of Hemingway and Dos Passos. It's important historical analysis of the Spanish Civil War, but made in the context of the profoundly conflicted friendship of two American literary giants." -Russell Banks, author of The Sweet Hereafter and Darling "Stephen Koch's The Breaking Point is simply a masterpiece-a spellbinding page-turner that finally unravels the whole story behind the Hemingway-Dos Passos break. Based on a solid sense of the real history of the Spanish Civil War and the nefarious role played by Stalin, Koch has produced a major contribution to both literature and history." -Ronald Radosh, Professor Emeritus of History, CUNY, co-author of The Rosenberg File "What a gripping literary saga! The two heavyweight American writers of the Great Depression era-Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos-feud over the horrific death of JosŽ Robles. Written like a mystery novel, laced with political intrigue, and with the Spanish Civil War as the backdrop, The Breaking Point is one knockout punch of a book." -Douglas Brinkley, Director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center for American Civilization, and Distinguished Professor of History, Tulane University Praise for Stephen Koch's Double Lives: "A magnificent tapestry...Double Lives is the best of all possible worlds-carefully made history to be read at night." -Alan Furst, author of Dark Voyage "Stephen Koch has written a thrilling, and what is more, fair book about one of the strangest episodes of an era." -David Remnick, author of Resurrection

About the Author
Stephen Koch is the former head of the Writing Division of Columbia University, and author of Double Lives: Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War Against the West, The Bachelor's Bride, Night Watch, Stargazer: The Life, World and Films of Andy Warhol, and The Modern Library Writer's Workshop. He lives in New York City.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The thrilling story of friends Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos in the Spanish Civil War, an ideological adventure that brought their friendship-and their literary rivalry-to the breaking point.

The Spanish Civil War was a flashpoint for many artists of the era, and the political left's romance with its cause led many creative luminaries to Spain, perhaps most notably Ernest Hemingway. John Dos Passos, widely regarded at the time as the literary voice of America's new socially engaged generation-his face was on the cover of Time the week the war broke out-was also among the important writers to make the trip to Spain. Dos Passos and Hemingway were longtime companions, and it is likely that mild-mannered "Dos" was oblivious to Hemingway's obsessive resentment of him. Anyway, the two men arrived in Spain as comrades of a sort.

The Breaking Point reveals that both Hemingway and Dos were in Spain as part of a group sponsored by Stalin's propaganda ministry. Then Dos's close friend Jose Robles Pazo was killed as a purported fascist spy. Dos could never accept Robles's guilt, putting him at odds with Hemingway and placing his politics (and literary reputation) into question. Dos's career never fully recovered.

Both a biographical portrait and history-in-miniature, The Breaking Point explores the time the two men shared in Spain, and how it affected each man, his work, and American literature as a whole.

Author Biography: Stephen Koch is the former head of the Writing Division of Columbia University, and author of Double Lives: Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War Against the West, The Bachelor's Bride, Night Watch, Stargazer: The Life, World and Films of Andy Warhol, and The Modern Library Writer's Workshop. He lives in New York City.

SYNOPSIS

When John Dos Passos walked into Ernest Hemingway's room in the Florida Hotel in Madrid, the air was thick with tension. Hemingway was fuming; Dos Passos was caught off guard. They were there to witness the Spanish Civil War firsthand, but something more personal was going on: as Spain was unraveling thread by thread, so was their friendship.

Dos Passos was widely regarded as the literary voice of America's new socially engaged generation-his face had been on the cover of Time the week the war broke out. And he had long considered Hemingway one of his best friends. Yet they were completely opposite in personality, with Dos Passos's calm temperament and mild manner standing in stark contrast to Hemingway's machismo. Dos Passos was probably oblivious even to Hemingway's envy of him-an envy that was soon to erupt into full-blown resentment.

They had arrived in Spain as comrades, leftist writers-in-arms. But when Dos Passos went looking for his close friend Jos Robles-a Spanish-born Johns Hopkins professor who had moved back to Spain to help save the Spanish Republic-Robles was nowhere to be found. Dos Passos's search for Robles would eventually take his literary career and his friendship with Hemingway to the breaking point.

In this stunning historical narrative, acclaimed writer Stephen Koch explores the short time the two men shared in Spain, and how their split changed the life and work of each man-and changed the course of American literature itself. A real-life literary mystery written with a novelist's eye for detail, The Breaking Point is the story of two lives at the intersection of friendship and murder, of love and death, and of literature and history.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Koch's new biographic history surveys the Spanish Civil War, the decline of literary modernism, the train wreck otherwise known as Ernest Hemingway's love life and the waning career of John Dos Passos-all while plotting the moral highs and lows of 1930s American and European intellectuals, politicos and revolutionaries. This is heady stuff, made headier still by Koch's revelation that the hand pulling each of these narrative threads belongs to no less a villain than Joseph Stalin. Far from spinning conspiracy theories, Koch coolly examines scholarship, memoirs and archival material that place Stalin's propaganda operatives at the heart of almost every relationship, argument and scene rendered in these masterful chapters. Chief among the affairs is the unraveling friendship between Hemingway and Dos Passos, two literary titans who spent the years of the Spanish Civil War in opposing slides toward (Hemingway) and away from (Dos Passos) the ideologies of well-meaning leftists. There may be no "elevator pitch" for Koch's book, no single phrase to utter in the ear of a film producer that would take this story from page to screen, and that's too bad, because Koch (former head of the Writing Division at Columbia) reaps enough death, sex, booze and intrigue from his subject to feed an Oscar contender. But the best part is really Koch himself. Present in the narrative as a historical detective, connecting the dots between his various sources, Koch also excels as a literary critic, one who loves books that are morally nuanced and gets brilliantly angry when the authors he respects ruin their talents by committing themselves to shortsighted ideological points. Agent, Carlisle & Company. (Apr.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Koch (Double Lives: Espionage and the War of Ideas, 1994, etc.) revisits the rude coming-of-age for American intellectuals in a deeply thoughtful, trenchant examination of a literary friendship soured during the Spanish Civil War. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War was thought to be "the great transforming convulsion" that intellectuals all over the world had been waiting for: the defining struggle at last between the radical fascist right, led by General Franco, and radical left, led by the elected Spanish government. Yet, as a few perceptive writers, like modernist truth-seeker John Dos Passos, quickly discovered, the cause wasn't quite so clear cut, especially since the left-the Popular Front-was financed and factionalized by the Soviet Comintern as it worked for Stalin and the appeasement of Hitler. When "Dos" discovered that his dear friend Jose "Pepe" Robles, a Spanish teacher chosen by the Soviet leadership to act as a kind of liaison to the Republic, had been dragged from his home at night and later shot on trumped-up charges of treason, Dos worked tirelessly to convince others, including Hemingway, of the shifting shades of treachery. However, for "Hem," the war was an intense experience necessary for renewing his artistic and emotional health, and thus he could easily be manipulated by the Soviet agents into swallowing the official line. As his paranoia grew, Hem attacked and humiliated Dos publicly, ending the friendship. Koch's previous research into Comintern's propaganda czar Willi Munzenberg allows him a terrific grasp of the events that brought the war in Spain and the Great Terror of 1936-38 into perfect coincidence; he exposes the insidious apparatchik Joris Ivens andhis propaganda film, The Spanish Earth, so adored by leftist America, and examines the double lives of many of these characters. He often treats Hem with savage sarcasm and Dos with sympathetic kid gloves, but it makes a whopping good literary tale. A defining conflict that still fascinates, explored here by a master of the literary and the political.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Praise for The Breaking Point

The Breaking Point is literary and political history that belongs alongside Homage to Catalonia and the best biographies of Hemingway and Dos Passos. It's important historical analysis of the Spanish Civil War, but made in the context of the profoundly conflicted friendship of two American literary giants. — (Russell Banks, author of The Sweet Hereafter and Darling)

Douglas Brinkley, Director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center for American Civilization, and Distinguished Professor of History, Tulane UniversityWhat a gripping literary saga! The two heavyweight American writers of the Great Depression era-Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos-feud over the horrific death of Jos Robles. Written like a mystery novel, laced with political intrigue, and with the Spanish Civil War as the backdrop, The Breaking Point is one knockout punch of a book. — Douglas Brinkley

Praise for Stephen Koch's Double Lives:

A magnificent tapestry...Double Lives is the best of all possible worlds-carefully made history to be read at night. — (Alan Furst, author of Dark Voyage)

Stephen Koch has written a thrilling, and what is more, fair book about one of the strangest episodes of an era. — (David Remnick, author of Resurrection)