The Plateau

in Russia-asking basic questions about how memory works in groups. I had some ideas about how I might start a search for peace. After all, even though the stories of violence were many, for the most part people seemed occupied with other things: They worked in kitchens or fields, hauled water, made decisions about what to do based on the weather, ate with guests, cleaned up after livestock. Even if they bristled sometimes, people generally faced each other day to day with working problems and working solutions. There was love and there were revelries and heartbreaks. And in spite of what they'd seen in life, or what their very own hands might have wrought on their worst days, people saw themselves as basically decent, and expected basic decency back from the world.

Surely, there had to be ways of looking for that kind of eye-to-eye decency. Surely, there were ways to study its power and its limits, particularly when people were faced with tempestuous times. Were there communities out there that were good at being good when things got bad? In my research on memory, I'd studied practices of resistance and persistence. Could there be communities that were somehow resistant to violence, persistent in decency? I didn't know exactly what I was on to, but I knew I wanted to study it. In shorthand, I called it peace.

But peace was hard to find. I dug into contemporary scholarship in anthropology, sociology, and political science; I went through databases and bibliographies and talked to colleagues who had been in the trenches with me in the study of a tumultuous Eurasia, and to other colleagues in peace studies programs or peace institutes. What I found was this: There is vastly more contemporary social science on violence than there is on peace. And most contemporary empirical research that says it is about peace is really about conflict. About resolving conflict, cleaning up after conflict, about programs to bring aid to people in conflict settings. About law and justice

narrative is as unforgettable as the region and individuals it brings to life. Publisher's Weekly (starred)

Multilayered, intimate .. Paxson is meticulous in her attention to   the way people live, their language, the choices people make in times of violence  An elegant, intensive study that grapples with an enormous idea: how to be good. Kirkus Reviews (starred)

Maggie Paxson went in search of human goodness and found a story that affected me in ways few books ever have. The Plateau is exquisite, excruciating, fearless  -- a book not only for these times, when our need for understanding is so great, but for all times. A masterpiece. David Finkel, author of The Good Soldiers and Thank You for Your Service

After so much written about evil and pathology, here at last is a beautiful book that proves that selflessness is not a fairy tale. In describing an astonishing tradition of idealism and sacrifice, Maggie Paxson captures human goodness in all its complexity and ferocity.
  Larissa MacFarquhar, author of Strangers Drowning

Maggie Paxson takes us on this wondrous, probing journey in her search for the roots of kindness. How is it, she asks, that this one small place has so bravely stood up for strangers? The Plateau and the people you ll meet in its pages are just the right antidote for these unsettling times.
Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here and An American Summer
 
In a world that feels increasingly dark, Paxson's remarkable search for parallels and paths to goodness between past and present, war and peace, is a heartbreaking and clear-eyed exploration of all that makes us human. She offers readers the key to survival: hope.   Sarah Wildman, author of Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind