This is a richly detailed and researched investigation of an understudied region of the world. Focusing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Anthony J. Amato examines historical print resources, including earlier ethnographic studies, to tease out subtle meanings on uses of a variety of cultural performances and traditions. Amato is attuned to the conflicting political, religious, and geographical claims being made through such traditions as Christmas caroling, funeral games, political rallies, and beliefs in witchcraft and vampirism. Always sensitive and never simplistic, this book is a fine example of historical ethnography.

Jack Santino, author of Public Performances: Studies in the Carnivalesque and the Ritualesque

Blending insights from history, ethnography, and anthropology, Dr. Amato takes us into the rich cultural world of the Hutsul people of the Carpathian mountains between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Morbid and comic, everyday and mundane, the Hutsuls’ largely oral culture reflected the ways these shepherds and smallholders lived their lives in their mountainous environment and their relationship with authority, both spiritual and secular. Through a series of episodes involving different aspects of their cultural and nicely supported by carefully chosen illustrations, Amato helps us make sense of this world before it was transformed by the forces of Soviet modernity.

David Moon, University of York, UK

Anthony J. Amato has now added to his earlier pathbreaking book on the Hutsuls’ complex relationship with their Carpathian mountain environment a sensitive and original account of their evolving values, traditions, and popular lore. He illuminates in vivid colors how the Hutsuls continuously constructed and adapted their understandings of themselves and their relations with governmental and church authorities, landowners, Jews, tourists, and other outsiders. This learned study will fascinate students of history, anthropology, and cultural studies.

Gary B. Cohen, University of Minnesota