The early development of the sociology of management and organizations has to be viewed in relation to the emergence, at the beginning of the 20th century, of a management movement. This movement took various forms. On the one hand, it entailed the formation of professional management associations in industrial societies, such as America and Britain, with the aim of promoting both knowledge of the principles of organization and the professional status of managers. On the other, it involved academic study of management and working conditions.

This book tells the story of Rose Zwi's forebears who were Lithuanian Jews caught up in the sweeping history of the first half of the century in Europe. Naryshkin Park, Zhager, Lithuania was once a place where lovers walked. It is now the site of a mass grave where it is thought 3000, although some say 7000, bodies lie -- massacred on 2 October 1941. Among them were members of Rose Zwi's family. Rose Zwi's quest is an attempt to exhume the past in order to come to grips with it.

The characters in these eleven stories range from a political activist, in the apartheid years, released from a South African jail into a seemingly uncaring world, to a child of immigrant parents living between two cultures; from the daughter of a tribal chief who returns from the city to her arid homeland in the heart of Africa, to the tragic love of a Rabbi and his wife in an East European shelter; from a dingo pursued to its inevitable end by the people of a small Australian town, to a South African farmer who allows his land to revert to its natural state. In her struggle to arrive at the truth of a situation, Rose Zwi's stories are leavened with humour and humanity. In the story which gives the name to this collection 'To Speak the Truth, Laughing', a politically inexperienced white woman joins an illegal march into a black township to protest against the arrest of black schoolchildren who have rebelled against the system. In another story, 'Conquest of America', a writer arrives in New York in search of a literary agent. Her present agent has axed her. "You must know lots of people in New York," he says as he bundles her into a taxi with her dog-eared manuscripts. "Not a soul," she replies. "Lovely," he says in a distracted manner. "Let's have coffee sometime." International award-winning author Rose Zwi has penned a joyous collection of stories bringing together Australian and South African lives.

They came from the shtetl to a new land, to a new life. Another year in Africa, they said, another year in exile. Old bonds break as they adjust from the old world of pogroms to their new life in Africa. Ruth, a child of six when the story begins, is caught up in their dreams and fears, haunted by memories and tragedy of persecution that are not even hers.