Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey

322 pp. "Fabled, feared, romanticized, and reviled, the Gypsies--the Roma--are perhaps the least understood people on earth. They have survived for a millennium, yet their history is obscure; their "nation" is a worldwide diaspora of twelve million, but their language remains unwritten and their culture largely mute. After the revolutions of 1989, Isabel Fonseca lived and traveled with the Gypsies of Bulgaria, Poland, and the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the former Yugoslavia, Romania, and Albania--listening to their stories and recording their attempts to become something more than despised outsiders." Includes 50 illustrations and three maps.