
Homage to Catalonia
George Orwell · 1938
Orwell went to Spain to fight for the Republic, was shot through the throat by a sniper, and witnessed the Communist Party's betrayal of the revolution from the inside. His furious, honest account of the Spanish Civil War (the idealism, the betrayal, the bureaucracy of oppression) is the first draft of everything he wrote afterwards.
Non-Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.