The third section is a masterly examination of the politics of Reconstruction and Redemption in Arkansas, the state's postwar economy, and the experience of the former slaves.

Goodwill in the seventeenth century Polish Commonwealth has been stretched thin due to the nobility’s perceived and real oppression of the less well-off members. When the situation reaches its inevitable breaking point, it sparks the taking up of arms by the Cossacks against the Polish nobility and a spiral of violence that engulfs the entire state. This background provides the canvas for vividly painted narratives of heroism and heartbreak of both the knights and the hetmans swept up in the struggle. Henryk Sienkiewicz had spent most of his adult life as a journalist and editor, but turned his attention back to historical fiction in an attempt to lift the spirits and imbue a sense of nationalism to the partitioned Poland of the nineteenth century. With Fire and Sword is the first of a trilogy of novels dealing with the events of the Khmelnytsky Uprising and the following wars of the late seventeenth century, and weaves fictional characters and events in among historical fact. While there is some contention about the fairness of the portrayal of Polish and Ukrainian belligerents, the novel certainly isn’t one-sided: all factions indulge in brutal violence in an attempt to sway the tide of war, and their grievances are clearly depicted. The initial serialization and later publication of the novel proved hugely popular, and in Poland the Trilogy has remained so ever since. In 1999, the novel was the subject of Poland’s then most expensive film, following the previously filmed later books. This edition is based on the 1890 translation by Jeremiah Curtin, who also translated Sienkiewicz’s later (and perhaps more internationally recognized) Quo Vadis. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

Whayne also offers an analysis of the forces at work on the local level. She suggests that concerted opposition to modernization existed even before New Deal programs gave power to the planters in the 1930s. She also demonstrates that the Arkansas delta experienced many of the same conflicts based on social class and racial caste that were evident in former slaveholding areas.

As black Arkansans emerged from chattel slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, they were supported in their efforts to redefine their lives by the work of the Freedmen's Bureau, a federal agency monitoring the South to ensure that at least a modicum of freedom was granted to the new citizens. In this account of the gains made by Arkansas freedmen during this period, Randy Finley takes a fresh approach by telling the story from the perspective of the blacks and whites who directly benefited from the Bureau, rather than from the perspective of the government bureaucrats, as found in reports from other states. Freedpersons tested their freedom in many ways - by assuming new names, searching for lost family members, moving to new residences, working to provide for their families, learning to read and write, forming and attending their own churches, creating thier own histories and myths, struggling to obtain land, and establishing different, nuances in race, gender, and class. As they built a bridge from slavery into freedom in these early years, African Americans learned for themselves that genuine psychological freedom is not granted by others.