Pietro Pinti, born as he says 'in the Middle Ages,' worked the land with hoe and plow from his earliest youth. Growing up under Mussolini's Fascist regime on a farm near Florence, he and his family lived under conditions of extreme poverty, as sharecroppers to generally unscrupulous landowners. But during World War II, when millions in towns and cities suffered untold hardships, the hardy Tuscan peasants were well equipped to face the rigors of the era: war or no war, work on the land went on, and Pietro describes month by month a typical year in their lives: how they made wine and olive oil, planted and harvested the wheat by hand, made baskets and ladders from chestnut wood-skills now lost. With sly wit and salty wisdom, Pietro, a natural storyteller who played the trumpet, wrote poetry, and grew famous for his tales of peasants, knights, and brigands, recreates in colorful detail a world and peasant culture that is fast disappearing. Jenny Bawtree, an Englishwoman long settled in Tuscany, was so fascinated by Pietro's stories that she helped shape them into this autobiography, full of color and humor, hardship and nostalgia.

Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a Polish-Lithuanian born in 1746, was one of the most important figures of the modern world. Fleeing his homeland after a death sentence was placed on his head (when he dared court a woman above his station), he came to America one month after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, literally showing up on Benjamin Franklin's doorstep in Philadelphia with little more than a revolutionary spirit and a genius for engineering. Entering the fray as a volunteer in the war effort, he quickly proved his capabilities and became the most talented engineer of the Continental Army. Kosciuszko went on to construct the fortifications for Philadelphia, devise battle plans that were integral to the American victory at the pivotal Battle of Saratoga, and designed the plans for Fortress West Point—the same plans that were stolen by Benedict Arnold. Then, seeking new challenges, Kosciuszko asked for a transfer to the Southern Army, where he oversaw a ring of African-American spies. A lifelong champion of the common man and woman, he was ahead of his time in advocating tolerance and standing up for the rights of slaves, Native Americans, women, serfs, and Jews. Following the end of the war, Kosciuszko returned to Poland and was a leading figure in that nation's Constitutional movement. He became Commander in Chief of the Polish Army and valiantly led a defense against a Russian invasion, and in 1794 he led what was dubbed the Kosciuszko Uprising—a revolt of Polish-Lithuanian forces against the Russian occupiers. Captured during the revolt, he was ultimately pardoned by Russia's Paul I and lived the remainder of his life as an international celebrity and a vocal proponent for human rights. Thomas Jefferson, with whom Kosciuszko had an ongoing correspondence on the immorality of slaveholding, called him "as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known." A lifelong bachelor with a knack for getting involved in doomed relationships, Kosciuszko navigated the tricky worlds of royal intrigue and romance while staying true to his ultimate passion—the pursuit of freedom for all. This definitive and exhaustively researched biography fills a long-standing gap in historical literature with its account of a dashing and inspiring revolutionary figure.

At eighty-five, Jacques Maritain, the most distinguished Catholic philosopher of the twentieth century, has written what he offers as his last book, and it turns out to be a shocker. The peasant, as Maritain calls himself in the title, is a man who calls a spade a spade; and a storm of controversy descended immediately on the book's publication in France, as both Right and Left reeled from the force of Maritain's criticism.The Peasant of the Garonne is a sharp attack on the new philosophy, hoping to cool off the fever for change that Maritain believes is imperiling the church's traditional spirituality and even the substance of doctrine. There is sardonic humor in his treatment of Teilhardians, phenomenologists, existentialists, new-style biblical critics, and clerical Freudians, but Maritain is deeply serious in warning that their capitulation to fashioniable trends represents a kind of kneeling before the world.

A Stanford University Press classic.

Xiaorong Han explores how Chinese intellectuals envisioned the peasantry and its role in changing society during the first half of the twentieth century. Politically motivated intellectuals, both Communist and non-Communist, believed that rural peasants and their villages would be at the heart of change during this long period of national crisis. Nevertheless, intellectuals saw themselves as the true shapers of change who would transform and use the peasantry. Han uses intellectuals' writings to provide a comprehensive look at their views of the peasantry. He shows how intellectuals with varying politics created images of the peasant—a supposed contemporary image and an ideal image of the peasant transformed for political ends, how intellectuals theorized on the nature of Chinese rural life, and how intellectuals conceived their own relationships with peasants.

A peasant found a golden mortar and as an honest and loyal man, he decided to give it to the king. The king was however not pleased. He wanted the pestle as well. He thought that the peasant had stolen it but as you know no such thing had happened. The peasant got locked up in the castle. If he had listened to his wise daughter’s words, he would not be imprisoned. The king heard the poor man’s grumbles and his curiosity awoke. Was this girl really that smart? He was going to find out. Children and adults alike, immerse yourselves into Grimm’s world of folktales and legends! Come, discover the little-known tales and treasured classics in this collection of 210 fairy tales. Brothers Grimm are probably the best-known storytellers in the world. Some of their most popular fairy tales are "Cinderella", "Beauty and the Beast" and "Little Red Riding Hood" and there is hardly anybody who has not grown up with the adventures of Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel and Snow White. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s exceptional literature legacy consists of recorded German and European folktales and legends. Their collections have been translated into all European languages in their lifetime and into every living language today.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.