The author was with the strikers in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk. He witnessed the defiance of the workers and the emergence of an improbable leader and hero in Lech Walesa. This book, therefore, acts as an eyewitness account of the occurances cited but also it provides an analysis of the powers ranged against Solidarity and of their pyrrhic victory. The author describes Solidarity's long underground struggle, its triumphant return in 1989 and the ironies of its subsequent disintegration.