Compilation of documents portraying milestones in three centuries of struggle.

in Ukrainian fields and forests in the 1940s and 1950s, but what makes any successful popular insurgency work, whether it takes place in America in 1776 or in troubled parts of the world today. History aside, Roman Mac's story is also a moving human document. There is tragedy, heartbreak and heroic endurance here, both witnessed and lived. And Roman depicts it all in modest, straightforward style not only the great struggle that was going on around him, but also the struggle that was going on within himself. We see and feel the rustic joys and travails of village life, the destruction and loss that war, Nazism and Communism bring upon it, and we, too, struggle along the "winding path to freedom" with a young boy who manages to keep his faith, his humanity and not the least of accomplishments amidst so much suffering and sorrow his sense of humor through it all. Although I was already familiar with Ukrainian history and, as an aide to Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, was 2 ROMAN D. MAC an eye witness to the last chapters of the Cold War, reading Roman Mac's story made me understand more fully what that colossal struggle was really like for the ordinary people who bore the brunt of it. His gift of making us see it all as he saw it then, through a young boy's eyes, brings alive both the brutality of battle and magic, solitary moments in the still forest with only woodland creatures as companions. We feel the pelting snow and piercing cold, we smell the smoke of the campfires, and we hear both the whiz of bullets and the deep, moving chords of the freedom fighters'songs, just as the young Roman Mac did more than half a century ago. Then, with the battle over, we follow a troubled but determined young man on the road to a new life in the west. We share the ups and downs of a new series of trials and tests from which he emerges once again with his humanity and his humor intact. By book's end, we feel as if we've walked beside him all the way, and we, too, experience his joy in achieving success, dignity and a happy family life in America. Thank you, Roman Mac, for sharing and showing us so much, and for doing it with such clarity, honesty and goodness of heart.

‘“Brother, you have another pair of boots,” Jaroslav Hašek said to me, grabbing me by the sleeve. “How do you know?” “Yesterday you were in army boots, and today you’ve got civilian ones on. I’d buy those army boots off you.” And in this way my high-laced boots, which I was given by the Austrian Red Cross way back in Beryozovka-za-Baikalom, came into Hašek’s possession. It was a silly thing to do. Not because I should have known that I wouldn’t get a kopeck out of Hašek in exchange for them — at bottom, I did know that — but as a former soldier, I should have thought about reserves. Life is a war and in this war, sometimes boots become casualties.’ Thus ruefully muses Janko Jesenský, Slovak poet and politician, in the pages of his On the Road to Freedom. This book, newly translated into English by Charles S. Kraszewski, is unique among the memoirs that came out of the First World War, as it chronicles not desperate charges or trench warfare, but the daily life of Austrian prisoners of war taken into Russian captivity at the very outset of the conflict. Of course, the reader will find more than one exciting passage in On the Road to Freedom, from eyewitness accounts of the Soviet Revolution in Kiev and Saint Petersburg to the heroic and bloody route cut by the Czechoslovak Legions through Red Army forces as the former POWs make their way across Siberia to Vladivostok and the long steamboat journey home, where they will aid in establishing the newly independent Republic of Czechoslovakia. But the most engaging aspect of On the Road to Freedom, and the poems that Jesenský composed during his Russian captivity (a generous selection of which are appended to these memoirs), is the palpable experience of the daily life of the POW — far from home, cold, and hungry, one of the ‘ants [who] / Roil the yard with mess-plates in their hands — / Like hungry beasts for fish-soup from the kitchen.’ Besides their value as literary texts, Janko Jesenský’s wartime writings in verse and prose are a welcome addition to the English library of early twentieth century history. They provide a fresh, Slovak perspective on the ‘Great War,’ the Russian Revolution, the establishment of the Czechoslovak state, and the situation of the smaller Central European nations on the chessboard of politics dominated by great powers. This book was published with a financial support from SLOLIA, Centre for Information on Literature in Bratislava.

An intriguing tale of one woman’s fight for freedom as she tries to save herself from her past. In The Perilous Road to Freedom, the anticipated sequel to The Perilous Road to Her, N.L. Blandford takes us on Olivia Beaumont’s harrowing journey to find herself and her freedom. A survivor of William Hammond’s human trafficking ring, Olivia Beaumont longs to forget the past five months. Pregnant, and scared of the ties her past will have to her future, Olivia will need more than denial to battle the monsters of her nightmares, and fate. Right outside Olivia’s apartment door stands a past she thought was dead and gone. A past believed to have been killed with her own two hands. A past that forces her back into a world of power, greed and manipulation. Will Olivia’s stubbornness and determination be enough for her to be able to fight the monsters around her, and those in her head, to retake her freedom?

Cassie, a runaway slave who returns to slave territory to free a child she left behind, is assisted by activities of the Underground Railroad and the Quakers, Levi Coffin and Laura Haviland.