What interests me is not so much the personal qualities of the men and women in this history but how capitalism has made use of them. To think about life this way is not to surrender to predetermination; only by understanding how we’re made use of can we start to distinguish our selves from our situations. How can you know what you want or feel or think—who you are—if you don’t know which way history’s marionette strings are tugging? In the following pages you’ll meet characters who find ways to tug back, who pit themselves against the way things are and come to personify the system’s self-destructive countertendencies. People aren’t puppets, and to pull a person is to create the conditions for rebellion. Maybe we’re more like butterflies, pinned live and wriggling onto history’s collage.