A selection of the essays and newspaper articles written by Carlo Levi in the early 1950's about the economic and social conditions in Sicily at that time -- conditions that extracted a heartbreaking price from the contadini and laborers, not limited to malnutrition, malaria and madness. A lucid presentation of how the old noble families -- with the help of the Mafia -- obstructed government attempts at land reform and used bribery, theft, bullying, and murder to keep their tenants in grinding poverty.