During the Great Depression, the Federal Writers’ Project engaged jobless writers and researchers to interview former slaves about their experiences in bondage. Most of the interviewees were by then in their eighties and nineties, and their memories were soon to be lost to history. The effort was a huge success, eventually encompassing more than two thousand interviews and ten thousand pages of material across seventeen states. This collection presents the personal narratives of twenty-eight former Georgia slaves. As editor Andrew Waters notes, the “two ends of the human perspective—terror and joy� are often evident within the same interviews, as the ex-slaves tell of the abuses they endured while they simultaneously yearn for younger, simpler days. The result is a complex mix of emotions spoken out of a dark past that must not be forgotten. Andrew Waters is a writer and former editor. A native North Carolinian, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with Honors in Creative Writing and received a graduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the executive director of the Spartanburg Area Conservancy in Spartanburg, SC.

This is the first of three volumes which offer a detailed analysis of one of the major city-blocks of ancient Pompeii, destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Excavated between 1926 and 1932, the Insula of Menander is so named after the structure that occupies over half the block's total area of 3,500 square metres, the House of the Menander, one of the grandest mansions of the city. Other, smaller houses, notably the House of the Lovers and the House of the Craftsmen, occupy outlying parts, and a number of shops and apartments are interspersed among them. The purpose of the present volume is to document a complete survey of the architecture of the block and thus trace the structural history of the Insula, with its intricate pattern of changing property-boundaries, over the 250-300 years of its existence. Subsequent volumes will examine the decorations (wall-paintings and mosaic pavements) and the objects that were found during excavation. Paradoxically, while Pompeii is one of the best known of all Roman archaeological sites, very few areas of the site have been fully published. This is the first time a global study has been undertaken of one of the major city-blocks and it shows the enormous potential of such investigations to reveal insights into the social history of the city.

In his introduction to Prayin’ to Be Set Free, Andrew Waters likens the personal accounts of former Mississippi slaves to the music of that state’s legendary blues artists. The pain, the modest eloquence, and even the underlying vitality are much the same. What is now Mississippi wasn’t acquired by the United States until 1798, at which time it had fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, excluding Native Americans. By the Civil War, it had over 430,000 slaves and 350,000 whites. More than half the whites were members of slave-owning families. The majority of slaves worked in the cotton fields. Mississippi was known as a slave-buying frontier state, in contrast to the eastern states, which sold slaves westward. Indeed, many of the former slaves in this book speak of coming to Mississippi as children. At the height of the Depression, the out-of-work wordsmiths who comprised the Federal Writers’ Project began interviewing elderly African-Americans about their experiences under slavery. The former slaves were more than 70 years removed from bondage, but the memories of many of them were strikingly clear. The accounts from former Mississippi slaves are considered among the strongest in the entire collection. The 28 narratives presented here are the best of those. Andrew Waters is a writer and former editor. A native North Carolinian, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with Honors in Creative Writing and received a graduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the executive director of the Spartanburg Area Conservancy in Spartanburg, SC.

“In the most barren inhospitable unhealthy part of North America, opposed by the most savage, inveterate perfidious cruel Enemy, with zeal and with Bayonets only, it was resolv'd to follow Green's Army, to the end of the World.� So wrote British general Charles O'Hara about the epic confrontation between Nathanael Greene and Charles Cornwallis during the winter of 1780-81\. Only Greene's starving, threadbare Continentals stood between Cornwallis and control of the South—and a possible end to the American rebellion. Burning their baggage train so that they could travel more quickly, the British doggedly pursued Greene's bedraggled soldiers, yet the rebels remained elusive. Daniel Morgan's stunning victory at Cowpens over a superior British force set in motion the “Race to the Dan,� Greene's month-long strategic retreat across the Carolinas. In constant rain and occasional snow, Greene's soldiers— tracking the ground with their bloody feet—bound toward a secret stash of boats on the Dan River. Just before Cornwallis could close his trap, the Continentals crossed into Virginia and safety. Greene's path featured three nearmiss river escapes, the little-known Battle of Cowan's Ford, and a final chase so close that the fate of the American South—and the American effort—rested on one wrong British move. With a background section on the Southern theater in 1780, and a summary outlining the lives and careers of its important officers, To the End of the World: Nathanael Greene, Charles Cornwallis, and the Race to the Dan is a carefully documented and beautifully written account of this extraordinary chapter of American history. The book not only showcases the incredible dramatics of the American Revolution's “Great Escape,� but also provides a compelling look at the psychological and intellectual distinctions between its two great generals, Greene and Cornwallis.