When Renee Fox first traveled to Brussels in 1959 to study the Belgian institutions of medical research, she scarcely realized how strongly Belgium's way of life would take hold of her. Fascinated by the culture and its people, she began thirty-five years of investigation of that small European country.

Moving across Belgium's geography and society, Ms. Fox uses her autobiography as a wedge to explore the ways of life of the chateaux and their inhabitants. Blending social and cultural analysis with ethnography, contemporary history, interviews, and her personal reflections, she succeeds in conveying the values, images, atmosphere, and world-view of a whole European society since World War II.

Her encounters are with important powers in government and science, with great playwrights, with families of the middle class as well as those of wealth and stature, and with the routinized but socially revealing banks, railroads, and postal systems of Belgium. Her experiences in the African country of Zaire (formerly the Congo), at a time when it was pulling away from its status as a Belgian colony, make an insightful report on this moment of change.