"This book sets out in detail, and in a very engaging manner, the thrills as well as the difficulties involved in living with and at the same time studying rural societies. A unique feature of this absorbing account is that it documents forty years of change (both positive and negative) in two villages of south India by the same team of researchers. T. Scarlett Epstein, an expatriate scholar, was assisted by A.P. Suryanarayana when she conducted her first field research in these villages between 1954 and 1956. These two researchers studied the villages for a second time in 1970 and Professor Epstein predicted the changes that would occur by the turn of the century. In 1996-97, they were joined by T. Thimmegowda - an exceptional researcher from one of these villages - for this re-study and found that most of her prognostications were fairly accurate." "Another unusual feature of this book is that not only does each co-author describe and analyse the changes from her or his perspective but, wherever feasible, they allow their village informants to speak for themselves."