The World Outside Mary's Farm This is very close to the title of one of the chapters in the book but the theme actually runs throughout the book in other chapters. One of the things that intrigued me in researching was the backdrop of what else was going on while Mary wrote about the harvest or visiting family or planting her garden. Long before I started writing the book, when I was still doing general research and trying to get the diary entries in their proper place, I explored events happening on the national or global stage. For much of the diary time period, I could find "year in review" articles in newspapers where they would recap their major stories of the year. A lot of these tended to be where one group was warring with another group, political leaders who died or were elected or deposed, celebrities who did something notable, etc. But they also included scientific discoveries, breakthroughs in medicine, records broken, or big news in human interest topics. I ...