Oppression and injustice, war and revolution, have inspired the world's most passionate writing and its wisest. Gathered together in this unique volume are thirty-four short stories about societies in upheaval, countries under the heel of tyrants, and people caught up in the movements and machinations of politics. Widely separated by time and nationality, many of the authors share an uncannily similar use of satire and irony as they write of themes that fire up both our emotions and intellect. But the real heart of all these stories is its fighting words—the ideals men and women are willing to die for—as editor Mitchell Cohen juxtaposes world-famous tales with hard-to-find stories from the Soviet Union and Africa to give this collection an exceptional depth and rich variety that will captivate the reader from the first story to the last.

Contents:

• My Kinsman, Major Molineux by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• A Coup d'État by Guy de Maupassant
• An Anarchist by Joseph Conrad
• "The Grand Inquisitor" (excerpt from The Brothers Karamazov) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• The Infernal Parliament by Saki
• How Fear Came by Rudyard Kipling
• The Strength of the Strong by Jack London
• The Scapegoat by Paul Laurence Dunbar
• A Mayor and His People by Theodore Dreiser
• Gedali by Isaac Babel
• The Bust of the Emperor (from Hotel Savoy) by Joseph Roth
• Kings in Exile (from Bezrobotny Lucyfer) by Aleksander Wat
• Eternal Triangle by Frank O'Connor
• What Does It Matter? A Morality by E. M. Forster
• Mario and the Magician by Thomas Mann
• Simplicio by Ignazio Silone
• A Circle of Friends by Vladimir Voinovich
• Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell
• The Imaginary Jew by John Berryman
• Theme of the Traitor and the Hero by Jorge Luis Borges
• Toba Tek Singh by Sadat Hasan Manto
• The Gentlemen of the Jungle by Jomo Kenyatta
• The Martyr by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
• Vengeful Creditor by Chinua Achebe
• At the Rendezvous of Victory by Nadine Gordimer
• The Diplomat by B. Traven
• And We Sold the Rain by Carmen Naranjo
• One of These Days by Gabriel García Márquez
• The Censors Luisa Valenzuela
• The Death of His Excellency the Ex-Minister by Nawal el-Saadawi
• Direct Action by Mike Thelwell
• The Congressman Who Loved Flaubert by Ward Just
• At the Anarchists' Convention by John Sayles