The Spanish Civil War drastically reshaped the nation's literary culture for generations afterward, and as a case in point, Aaron Shulman traces the lives, loves, and poetry of the Paneros, Spain's most compelling and eccentric literary family. Weaving memoir with cultural history and biography, Shulman sheds new light on the romance and intellectual ferment of the era while revealing the enduring devastation of the war, the Franco dictatorship, and the country's transition to democracy. As this group portrait reveals, the Paneros were at the center of a web that included Pablo Neruda, Salvador Dalí, Ava Gardner, Pablo Picasso, and Roberto Bolaño.