It transformed the relationship between England, Scotland and Ireland, reset the compact between the monarch and the people, and re-fashioned the story the British told - and continue to tell - about themselves. REPUBLIC is a richly engrossing year-by-year account of this exhilarating and daring period.

It was the summer of 1983. Barbara Kingsolver had a day job as a scientific writer spends her weekends cutting her teeth as a freelance journalist when she landed an assignment. Her mission: was to cover the Phelps Dodge mine strike.Over the year that followed Kingsolver stood with those miners and their families, increasingly engaged and heartbroken. She recorded stories of striking miners and their stunningly courageous wives, sisters and daughters. She saw rights she'd taken for granted de...