Margaret (Peggy) Wilson, born in England in 1897, was the model of the new woman, serving as a medical volunteer during World War I, and later going to medical school to become a doctor of tropical diseases. In 1926, Peggy traveled to Kathmandu, and four years later married her friend from medical school who was on assignment with the British Colonial Medical Service in Tanganyika (modern-day Tanzania). Peggy and Donald spent the next 30 years working side-by-side on malaria research and public health, winning multiple awards in the process. Peggy's daughter Sylvie, born in 1935, recalls World War II in Tanganyika and Kenya, boarding school, and university at Cambridge. After university, Sylvie returned home to teach and married a Greek Tanganyikan farmer. They welcomed independence and the nation of Tanzania, yet struggled under the impacts it had for expats. While most of the Greek community left Tanzania, Sylvie and her husband persisted on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, participating in building new Tanzania. Drawn from Peggy's unpublished memoir and the letters, diaries and photographs that Sylvie meticulously collected, this inspiring mother-daughter memoir spans three continents and a century of travel, love, defiance, wars, medical research, and revolutions.

Often referred to as the leader of inspiration in Appalachian studies, Helen Matthews Lewis linked scholarship with activism and encouraged deeper analysis of the region. Lewis shaped the field of Appalachian studies by emphasizing community participation and challenging traditional perceptions of the region and its people. Helen Matthews Lewis: Living Social Justice in Appalachia, a collection of Lewis's writings and memories that document her life and work, begins in 1943 with her job on the yearbook staff at Georgia State College for Women with Mary Flannery O'Connor.

Editors Patricia D. Beaver and Judith Jennings highlight the achievements of Lewis's extensive career, examining her role as a teacher and activist at Clinch Valley College (now University of Virginia at Wise) and East Tennessee State University in the 1960s, as well as her work with Appalshop and the Highland Center. Helen Matthews Lewis connects Lewis's works to wider social movements by examining the history of progressive activism in Appalachia. The book provides unique insight into the development of regional studies and the life of a dynamic revolutionary, delivering a captivating and personal narrative of one woman's mission of activism and social justice.

Following his retirement in 1976 from a distinguished career as a teacher and administrator at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, Cratis Williams wrote these memoirs of his life odyssey from a log cabin in eastern Kentucky to the upper echelons of American education.