Constantin C. Giurescu was Romania's leading historian and author of the seminal The History of the Romanian People. His granddaughter's fascinating story of this remarkable man and his family follows their struggles in war-torn Romania from 1900 to the fall of the Soviet Union. An "enlightened" society is dismantled with the 1946 Communist takeover of Romania, and Constantin is confined to the notorious Sighet penitentiary. Drawing on her grandfather's prison diary (which was put in a jar, bur-ied in a yard, then smuggled out of the country by Dr. Paul E. Michelson-who does the FOREWORD for...