By the end of the 1930s, radical journalist and novelist Josephine Herbst (1892-1969) was widely hailed as one of the most important women writers in America. Yet she died in almost total obscurity. The Starched Blue Sky of Spain And Other Memoirs comprises four autobiographical works: "The Magicians and Their Apprentices," an intimate remembrance of Herbst's girlhood in turn-of-the-century Sioux City, Iowa; "A Year of Disgrace," a contemplative portrait of American literary culture in the 1920s; "Yesterday's Road," an explorative meditation on Herbst's life as a radical; and the title selection, a poignant and lucid evocation of the author's experience during the Spanish Civil War.