[Patricia Leighten] produces a new kind of synthesis. Part social and political history, part patchwork of eyewitness accounts, it works over well-beaten ground and gets it to flower again... Ms. Leighten carries us with her all the way from Barcelona between 1895 and 1904, with anarchism almost ubiquitous in the periodical press, to Paris on the eve of World War I, with Picasso larding his every cut-paper collage with loaded comment on the outrages of the day... This is a most remarkable book, and one to which all future students of Picasso will be indebted... --John Russell, The New York Times Book Review A successful effort to connect art to politics... Necessary reading for any serious student of Picasso's work.--Gregory McNamee, The Bloomsbury Review Anyone studying the history of Cubism and related movements should read [this book] to rectify the myth that Pablo Picasso and his coterie really believed that significance lies only in form.--George Woodcock, The New Leader