In 1962, when the Cold War threatened to ignite in the Cuban Missile Crisis, when more nuclear test bombs were detonated than in any other year in history, Rachel Carson released her own bombshell, Silent Spring, to challenge society's use of pesticides. To counter the use of chemicals-and bombs-the naturalist articulated a holistic vision. She wrote about a "web of life" that connected humans to the world around them and argued that actions taken in one place had consequences elsewhere. Pesticides sprayed over croplands seep into ground water and move throughout the ecosystem, harming the environment. Thousands accepted her message, joined environmental groups, flocked to Earth Day celebrations, and lobbied for legislative regulation. Carson was not the only intellectual to offer holistic answers to society's problems. This book uncovers a holistic sensibility in post-World War II American culture that both tested the logic of the Cold War and fed some of the twentieth century's most powerful social movements, from civil rights to environmentalism to the counterculture. The study examines six important leaders and institutions that embraced and put into practice a holistic vision for a peaceful, healthful, and just world: nature writer Rachel Carson; structural engineer R. Buckminster Fuller; civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.; Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow; and the Esalen Institute and its founders, Michael Murphy and Dick Price. Each looked to whole systems instead of parts and focused on connections, interdependencies, and integration to create a better world. In the 1960s and 1970s, holistic conceptions and practices infused the March on Washington, Earth Day, the human potential movement, New Age spirituality, and alternative medicine. Though dreams of creating a more perfect world were tempered by economic inequalities, political corruption, and deep social divisions, this sensibility influenced American culture in important ways that continue into the twenty-first century.

Its unique ability to sway the masses has led many observers to consider cinema the artform with the greatest political force. The images it produces can bolster leaders or contribute to their undoing. Soviet filmmakers often had to face great obstacles as they struggled to make art in an authoritarian society that put them not only under ideological pressure but also imposed rigid economic constraints on the industry. But while the Brezhnev era of Soviet filmmaking is often depicted as a period of great repression, Soviet Art House reveals that the films made at the prestigious Lenfilm studio in this period were far more imaginative than is usually suspected. In this pioneering study of a Soviet film studio, author Catriona Kelly delves into previously unpublished archival documents and interviews, memoirs, and the films themselves to illuminate the ideological, economic, and aesthetic dimensions of filmmaking in the Brezhnev era. She argues that especially the young filmmakers who joined the studio after its restructuring in 1961 revitalized its output and helped establish Leningrad as a leading center of oppositional art. This unique insight into Soviet film production shows not only the inner workings of Soviet institutions before the system collapsed but also traces how filmmakers tirelessly dodged and negotiated contradictory demands to create sophisticated and highly original movies.

The Second World War affected the lives and shaped the experience of millions of individuals in Germany--soldiers at the front, women, children and the elderly sheltering in cellars, slave laborers toiling in factories, and concentration-camp prisoners and POWs clearing rubble in the Reich's devastated cities.
Taking a "history from below" approach, the volume examines how the minds and behaviour of individuals were moulded by the Party as the Reich took the road to Total War. The ever-increasing numbers of German workers conscripted into the Wehrmacht were replaced with forced foreign workers and slave labourers and concentration camp prisoners. The interaction in everyday life between German civilian society and these coerced groups is explored, as is that society's relationship to the Holocaust.
From early 1943, the war on the home front was increasingly dominated by attack from the air. The role of the Party, administration, police, and courts in providing for the vast numbers of those rendered homeless, in bolstering civilian morale with "miracle revenge weapons" propaganda, and in maintaining order in a society in disintegration is reviewed in detail.
For society in uniform, the war in the east was one of ideology and annihilation, with intensified indoctrination of the troops after Stalingrad. The social profile of this army is analysed through study of a typical infantry division. The volume concludes with an account of the various forms of resistance to Hitler's regime, in society and the military, culminating in the failed attempt on his life in July 1944.

Here is a fascinating compact history of Chinese political, economic, and cultural life, ranging from the origins of civilization in China to the beginning of the 21st century. Historian Paul Ropp combines vivid story-telling with astute analysis to shed light on some of the larger questions of Chinese history. What is distinctive about China in comparison with other civilizations? What have been the major changes and continuities in Chinese life over the past four millennia? Offering a global perspective, the book shows how China's nomadic neighbors to the north and west influenced much of the political, military, and even cultural history of China. Ropp also examines Sino-Indian relations, highlighting the impact of the thriving trade between India and China as well as the profound effect of Indian Buddhism on Chinese life. Finally, the author discusses the humiliation of China at the hands of Western powers and Japan, explaining how these recent events have shaped China's quest for wealth, power and respect today, and have colored China's perception of its own place in world history.

A narrative tour de force that combines wide-ranging scholarship with captivating prose, Kevin Starr's acclaimed multi-volume Americans and the California Dream is an unparalleled work of cultural history. In this volume, Starr covers the crucial postwar period-1950 to 1963-when the California we know today first burst into prominence. Starr brilliantly illuminates the dominant economic, social, and cultural forces in California in these pivotal years. In a powerful blend of telling events, colorful personalities, and insightful analyses, Starr examines such issues as the overnight creation of the postwar California suburb, the rise of Los Angeles as Super City, the reluctant emergence of San Diego as one of the largest cities in the nation, and the decline of political centrism. He explores the Silent Generation and the emergent Boomer youth cult, the Beats and the Hollywood "Rat Pack," the pervasive influence of Zen Buddhism and other Asian traditions in art and design, the rise of the University of California and the emergence of California itself as a utopia of higher education, the cooling of West Coast jazz, freeway and water projects of heroic magnitude, outdoor life and the beginnings of the environmental movement. More broadly, he shows how California not only became the most populous state in the Union, but in fact evolved into a mega-state en route to becoming the global commonwealth it is today. Golden Dreams continues an epic series that has been widely recognized for its signal contribution to the history of American culture in California. It is a book that transcends its stated subject to offer a wealth of insight into the growth of the Sun Belt and the West and indeed the dramatic transformation of America itself in these pivotal years following the Second World War. This is the seventh volume in Kevin Starr's widely acclaimed and monumental history of California-Americans and the California Dream. It covers the crucial postwar period-1950 to 1963-when much of what has become California as we know it today was brought into existence. As in previous volumes, Starr brilliantly illuminates the dominant economic, social, and cultural forces in California in these years. Among the topics discussed are the suburbanization of California, with emphasis on the San Fernando Valley, Orange County, the San Francisco Peninsula, and Marin County; life style and the novels that reflected it; the rise of San Diego; the "Golden Age of San Francisco," with its cultural roots and influential minorities; Los Angeles, the Chandlers, the Music Center, the Dodgers, and its special lifestyle; defense industries; Cold War "think tanks," Palo Alto and the creation of the transistor and later the computer industry; the new California "Multiversity" and its director, Clark Kerr; public works, with special emphasis on the burgeoning of freeways; and cultural events and happenings, including jazz, the "Beats," the Hollywood "rat pack" (Sinatra and friends) and the flowering of Palm Springs, youth culture, and "Zen California."

Dr Franklin Sonn is a struggle icon, diplomat, educationalist and business leader.

He was born in the Vosburg district of Victoria West. As a civil rights campaigner, he was arrested for leading a protest march in 1989. He later served as rector of the (Cape) Peninsula Technikon and as head of the Cape Teachers' Professional Association. He was a good friend and confidant of Nelson Mandela.

In 1995, Madiba asked him to be South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, USA. Sonn celebrated his 85th birthday on 11 October 2024.

Go beyond the bottle and step inside the minds- and vines- of Virginia's burgeoning wine industry in this groundbreaking volume. Join grape grower and industry insider Walker Elliott Rowe as he guides you through some of the top vineyards and wineries in the Old Dominion. Rowe explores the minds of pioneering winemakers and vineyard owners, stitches together an account of the wine industry's foundation in Virginia, from Jamestown to Jefferson to Barboursville, and uncovers the fascinating missing chapter in Virginia wine history. As the Philip Carter Winery's motto explains, 'Before there was Jefferson, there was Carter.'

Rowe goes behind the scenes to interview migrant workers who toil daily in the vineyards, makes the rounds in Richmond with an industry lobbyist and talks shop with winemakers on the science and techniques that have helped put the Virginia wine industry on the map. Also included are twenty-four stunning color photographs from professional photographer Jonathan Timmes and a foreword by noted wine journalist Richard Leahy.

This engaging study provides new perspectives on the lives and work of two major figures in American poetry and publishing in the second half of the twentieth century: Robert Giroux (1914-2008), editor-in-chief of Harcourt, Brace and Company and later of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and John Berryman (1914-1972), Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Shakespearean scholar who also received a National Book Award and a Bollingen Prize for Poetry. From their first meeting as undergraduates at Columbia College in New York City in the early 1930s, Giroux and Berryman became lifelong friends and publishing partners. Patrick Samway received unprecedented access to Giroux's letters and essays. By incorporating either sections or whole letters of the correspondence between Berryman and Giroux into this book, Samway makes available for the first time a historical account of their relationship, including revealing portraits of their personal lives. As Giroux edited over a dozen books by Berryman, his letters to the poet were often filled with editorial details and pertinent observations, emanating from his genuine affection for his friend, whose talent he never doubted, even as Berryman endured prolonged periods of hospitalization due to his alcoholism. Giroux gave Berryman the greatest gift he could: sustained encouragement to continue writing without trying to manipulate or discourage him in any way. But Giroux also had a deep-seated secret desire to surpass the essays written about Shakespeare by Berryman, as well as the book on Shakespeare written by their mutual professor Mark Van Doren. Giroux's volume, The Book Known as Q: A Consideration of Shakespeare's Sonnets, was finally published in 1982. Samway's fascinating account of a gifted but troubled poet and his devoted yet conflicted editor will interest fans of Berryman and all readers and students of American poetry.

In a groundbreaking examination of the antislavery origins of liberal Protestantism, Molly Oshatz contends that the antebellum slavery debates forced antislavery Protestants to adopt an historicist understanding of truth and morality. Unlike earlier debates over slavery, the antebellum slavery debates revolved around the question of whether or not slavery was a sin in the abstract. Unable to use the letter of the Bible to answer the proslavery claim that slavery was not a sin in and of itself, antislavery Protestants, including William Ellery Channing, Francis Wayland, Moses Stuart, Leonard Bacon, and Horace Bushnell, argued that biblical principles opposed slavery and that God revealed slavery's sinfulness through the gradual unfolding of these principles. Although they believed that slavery was a sin, antislavery Protestants' sympathy for individual slaveholders and their knowledge of the Bible made them reluctant to denounce all slaveholders as sinners. In order to reconcile slavery's sinfulness with their commitments to the Bible and to the Union, antislavery Protestants defined slavery as a social rather than an individual sin. Oshatz demonstrates that the antislavery notions of progressive revelation and social sin had radical implications for Protestant theology. Oshatz carries her study through the Civil War to reveal how emancipation confirmed for northern Protestants the antislavery notion that God revealed His will through history. She describes how after the war, a new generation of liberal theologians, including Newman Smyth, Charles Briggs, and George Harris, drew on the example of antislavery and emancipation to respond to evolution and historical biblical criticism. The theological innovations rooted in the slavery debates came to fruition in liberal Protestantism's acceptance of the historical and evolutionary nature of religious truth.

Bodies of Evidence: The Practice of Queer Oral History is the first book to provide serious scholarly insight into the methodological practices that shape lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer oral histories. Each chapter pairs an oral history excerpt with an essay in which the oral historian addresses his or her methods and practices. With an afterword by John D'Emilio, this collection enables readers to examine the role memory, desire, sexuality, and gender play in documenting LGBTQ communities and cultures.
The historical themes addressed include 1950s and '60s lesbian bar culture; social life after the Cuban revolution; the organization of transvestite social clubs in the U.S. midwest in the 1960s; Australian gay liberation activism in the 1970s; San Francisco electoral politics and the career of Harvey Milk; Asian American community organizing in pre-AIDS Los Angeles; lesbian feminist "sex war" cultural politics; 1980s and '90s Latina/o transgender community memory and activism in San Francisco; and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The methodological themes include questions of silence, sexual self-disclosure and voyeurism, the intimacy between researcher and narrator, and the social and political commitments negotiated through multiple oral history interviews. The book also examines the production of comparative racial and sexual identities and the relative strengths of same-sexuality, cross-sexuality, and cross-ideology interviewing.

After the battle of Antietam in 1862, Harriet Eaton traveled to Virginia from her home in Portland, Maine, to care for soldiers in the Army of the Potomac. Portland's Free Street Baptist Church, with liberal ties to abolition, established the Maine Camp Hospital Association and made the widowed Eaton its relief agent in the field. One of many Christians who believed that patriotic activism could redeem the nation, Eaton quickly learned that war was no respecter of religious principles. Doing the work of nurse and provisioner, Eaton tended wounded men and those with smallpox and diphtheria during two tours of duty. She preferred the first tour, which ended after the battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, to the second, more sedentary, assignment at City Point, Virginia, in 1864. There the impositions of federal bureaucracy standardized patient care at the expense of more direct communication with soldiers. Eaton deplored the arrogance of U.S. Sanitary Commissioners whom she believed saw state benevolent groups as competitors for supplies. Eaton struggled with the disruptions of transience, scarcely sleeping in the same place twice, but found the politics of daily toil even more challenging. Conflict between Eaton and co-worker Isabella Fogg erupted almost immediately over issues of propriety; the souring working conditions leading to Fogg's ouster from Maine state relief efforts by late 1863. Though Eaton praised some of the surgeons with whom she worked, she labeled others charlatans whose neglect had deadly implications for the rank and file. If she saw villainy, she also saw opportunities to convert soldiers and developed an intense spiritual connection with a private, which appears to have led to a postwar liaison. Published here for the first time, the uncensored nursing diary is a rarity among medical accounts of the war, showing Eaton to be an astute observer of human nature and not as straight-laced as we might have thought. This hardcover edition includes an extensive introduction from the editor, transcriptions of relevant letters and newspaper articles, and a thoroughly researched biographical dictionary of the people mentioned in the diary.

American living standards improved considerably between 1900 and 2000. While most observers focus on gains in per-capita income as a measure of economic well-being, economists have used other measures of well-being: height, weight, and longevity. The increased amount of leisure time per week and across people's lifetimes, however, has been an unsung aspect of the improved standard of living in America. In Century of the Leisured Masses, David George Surdam explores the growing presence of leisure activities in Americans' lives and how this development came out throughout the twentieth century. Most Americans have gone from working fifty-five or more hours per week to working fewer than forty, although many Americans at the top rungs of the economic ladder continue to work long hours. Not only do more Americans have more time to devote to other activities, they are able to enjoy higher-quality leisure. New forms of leisure have given Americans more choices, better quality, and greater convenience. For instance, in addition to producing music themselves, they can now listen to the most talented musicians when and where they want. Television began as black and white on small screens; within fifty years, Americans had a cast of dozens of channels to choose from. They could also purchase favorite shows and movies to watch at their convenience. Even Americans with low incomes enjoyed television and other new forms of leisure. This growth of leisure resulted from a combination of growing productivity, better health, and technology. American workers became more productive and chose to spend their improved productivity and higher wages by consuming more, taking more time off, and enjoying better working conditions. By century's end, relatively few Americans were engaged in arduous, dangerous, and stultifying occupations. The reign of tyranny on the shop floor, in retail shops, and in offices was mitigated; many Americans could even enjoy leisure activities during work hours. Failure to consider the gains in leisure time and leisure consumption understates the gains in American living standards. With Century of the Leisured Masses, Surdam has comprehensively documented and examined the developments in this important marker of well-being throughout the past century.

Who were the Victorians? Were they self-confident imperialists secure in the virtues of the home, and ruled by the values of authority, duty, religion and respectability? Or were they self-doubting and hypocritical prudes whose family life was authoritarian and loveless? Ever since Lytton Strachey mocked Florence Nightingale and General Gordon in Eminent Victorians, the reputation of the Victorians, and of what they stood for, has been the subject of vigorous debate.
John Gardiner provides a fascinating guide to the changing reputation of the Victorians during the 20th century. Different social, political, and aesthetic values, two world wars, youth culture, nostalgia, new historical trends and the heritage industry have all affected the way we see the age and its men and women. The second half of the book shows how radically biographical accounts have changed over the last 100 years, exemplified by four archetypical Victorians: Charles Dickens, W.E. Gladstone, Oscar Wilde, and Queen Victoria herself.

The City: A World History tells the story of the rise and development of urban centers from ancient times to the twenty-first century. It begins with the establishment of the first cities in the Near East in the fourth millennium BCE, and goes on to examine urban growth in the Indus River Valley in India, as well as Egypt and areas that bordered the Mediterranean Sea. Athens, Alexandria, and Rome stand out both politically and culturally. With the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, European cities entered into a long period of waning and deterioration. But elsewhere, great cities-among them, Constantinople, Baghdad, Chang'an, and Tenochtitlan-thrived. In the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, urban growth resumed in Europe, giving rise to cities like Florence, Paris, and London. This urban growth also accelerated in parts of the world that came under European control, such as Philadelphia in the nascent United States. As the Industrial Revolution swept through in the nineteenth century, cities grew rapidly. Their expansion resulted in a slew of social problems and political disruptions, but it was accompanied by impressive measures designed to improve urban life. Meanwhile, colonial cities bore the imprint of European imperialism. Finally, the book turns to the years since 1914, guided by a few themes: the impact of war and revolution; urban reconstruction after 1945; migration out of many cities in the United States into growing suburbs; and the explosive growth of "megacities" in the developing world.

Markets and fairs played a fundamental part in the commerce of the Mediterranean region in the Roman period. But where were they held, and what commodities were sold there? Using evidence from archaeology, inscriptions, and literary sources, Dr Frayn builds up a detailed and enlivening picture of stalls and stallholders, profiteering, and price control in ancient Italy, and invites comparison with medieval and modern practices. Besides the macella, or permanent markets in towns, Dr Frayn also looks at the much more numerous nundinae, or local markets, held every eight days, and the many fairs and festivals throughout Italy where retailing took place, often associated with shrines and characterized by religious motifs. The book includes a discussion of the economic and social effects of markets and fairs, including their relation to geography, demography, and modern `central place theory'. There is also a chapter on market law, which can be traced from the ius commercii to the supervision of weights, measures, and pricing. As trade contacts widened, and merchandise grew more diverse, markets and marketing evolved with increasing complexity into a highly developed system, which in the wake of conquest came to influence larger areas of inter-regional trade.

This inquiry into the technical advances that shaped the 20th century follows the evolutions of all the principal innovations introduced before 1913 (as detailed in the first volume) as well as the origins and elaborations of all fundamental 20th century advances. The history of the 20th century is rooted in amazing technical advances of 1871-1913, but the century differs so remarkably from the preceding 100 years because of several unprecedented combinations. The 20th century had followed on the path defined during the half century preceding the beginning of World War I, but it has traveled along that path at a very different pace, with different ambitions and intents. The new century's developments elevated both the magnitudes of output and the spatial distribution of mass industrial production and to new and, in many ways, virtually incomparable levels. Twentieth century science and engineering conquered and perfected a number of fundamental challenges which remained unresolved before 1913, and which to many critics appeared insoluble. This book is organized in topical chapters dealing with electricity, engines, materials and syntheses, and information techniques. It concludes with an extended examination of contradictory consequences of our admirable technical progress by confronting the accomplishments and perils of systems that brought liberating simplicity as well as overwhelming complexity, that created unprecedented affluence and equally unprecedented economic gaps, that greatly increased both our security and fears as well as our understanding and ignorance, and that provided the means for greater protection of the biosphere while concurrently undermining some of the keybiophysical foundations of life on Earth.
Transforming the Twentieth Century will offer a wide-ranging interdisciplinary appreciation of the undeniable technical foundations of the modern world as well as a multitude of welcome and worrisome consequences of these developments. It will combine scientific rigor with accessible writing, thoroughly illustrated by a large number of appropriate images that will include historical photographs and revealing charts of long-term trends.

Introduced in 1918 as an award for bravery in the field, the Military Medal was almost immediately open to women. During its 80 year existence, the Military Medal was awarded to women on only 146 occasions, the vast majority during the First World War. This volume provides the definitive roll of recipients together with citations, many of which were not available at the time, plus service and biographical detail. Over 80% of the entries are accompanied by a photograph. The vast majority of the recipients were British, but the medal was open to women of all nationalities and the names of French and United States recipients are recorded together with allied personnel from the Empire.

The first major volume to place U.S.-centered labor history in a transnational or U.S.-in-the-world focus, Workers Across the Americas collects the newest work of leading Canadianist, Caribbeanist, and Latin American specialists, as well as U.S. historians. As distinct from comparative histories built around the integrity of their nation-state subjects, these essays highlight both the supra- or sub-national aspect of selected topics without ignoring the power of nation-states themselves as historical forces. Indeed, the transnational focus opens new avenues for understanding changes in the concepts, policies and practice of states, their interactions with each other and their populations, and the ways in which the popular classes resist, react, and use both nation-state and non-state entities to advance their interests. What does this transnational turn encompass? And what are its likely perils as well as promise as a framework for research and analysis? To address these questions six eminent scholars (John French, Julie Greene, Neville Kirk, Aviva Chomsky, Dirk Hoerder, and Vic Satzewich) lead off the volume with their own critical commentaries on the very project of transnational labor history. Their responses effectively offer a tour of explanations, tensions, and cautions in the evolution of a new arena of research and writing. Thereafter, Workers Across the Americas groups fifteen research essays around themes of Labor and Empire, Indigenous Peoples and Labor Systems, International Feminism and Reproductive Labor, Labor Recruitment and Immigration Control, Transnational Labor Politics, and Labor Internationalism. Topics range from military labor in the British Empire to coffee workers on the Guatemalan/Mexican border to the Atlantic white slavery traffic to the role of the International Labor Organization in attempting to set common labor standards. Leading scholars-including Camille Guerin-Gonzalez, Alex Lichtenstein, Nelson Lichtenstein, Colleen O'Neill, Premilla Nadasen, and Bryan Palmer-introduce each section and also make recommendations for further reading.

See the author featured in the "New Books in History" podcast:
http: //newbooksinhistory.com/2011/04/01/erik-jensen-body-by-weimar-athletes-gender-and-german-modernity-oxford-up-2010/
In Body by Weimar, Erik N. Jensen shows how German athletes reshaped gender roles in the turbulent decade after World War I and established the basis for a modern body and modern sensibility that remain with us to this day. The same cutting-edge techniques that engineers were using to increase the efficiency of factories and businesses in the 1920s aided athletes in boosting the productivity of their own flesh and bones. Sportswomen and men embodied modernity-quite literally-in its most streamlined, competitive, time-oriented form, and their own successes on the playing fields seemed to prove the value of economic rationalization to a skeptical public that often felt threatened by the process. Enthroned by the media as culture's trendsetters, champions in sports such as tennis, boxing, and track and field also provided models of sexual empowerment, social mobility, and self-determination. They showed their fans how to be modern, and, in the process, sparked heated debates over the aesthetics of the body, the limits of physical exertion, the obligations of citizens to the state, and the relationship between the sexes. If the images and debates in this book strike readers as familiar, it might well be because the ideal body of today-sleek, efficient, and equally available to men and women-received one of its earliest articulations in the fertile tumult of Germany's roaring twenties. After more than eighty years, we still want the Weimar body.

One of the world's most ancient and enduring civilizations, Iran has long played a central role in human events and continues to do so today. This book traces the spread of Iranian culture among diverse populations ranging from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, and along the Silk Roads as far as China, from prehistoric times up to the present day. From paradise gardens and Persian carpets to the mystical poetry of Rumi and Hafez, Iran's contributions have earned it a place among history's greatest and most influential civilizations. Encompassing the fields of religion, literature and the arts, politics, and higher learning, this book provides a holistic history of this important culture.

Although millions of Russians lived as serfs until the middle of the nineteenth century, little is known about their lives. Identifying and documenting the conditions of Russian serfs has proven difficult because the Russian state discouraged literacy among the serfs and censored public expressions of dissent. To date scholars have identified only twenty known Russian serf narratives. Four Russian Serf Narratives contains four of these accounts and is the first translated collection of autobiographies by serfs. Scholar and translator John MacKay brings to light for an English-language audience a diverse sampling of Russian serf narratives, ranging from an autobiographical poem to stories of adventure and escape. Autobiography (1785) recounts a highly educated serf s attempt to escape to Europe, where he hoped to study architecture. The long testimonial poem News About Russia (ca. 1849) laments the conditions under which the author and his fellow serfs lived. In The Story of My Life and Wanderings (1881) a serf tradesman tells of his attempt to simultaneously escape serfdom and captivity from Chechen mountaineers. The fragmentary Notes of a Serf Woman (1911) testifies to the harshness of peasant life with extraordinary acuity and descriptive power. These accounts offer readers a glimpse, from the point of view of the serfs themselves, into the realities of one of the largest systems of unfree labor in history. The volume also allows comparison with slave narratives produced in the United States and elsewhere, adding an important dimension to knowledge of the institution of slavery and the experience of enslavement in modern times."