Note: This part was listed as "Recipes for Revolution" in the table of contents. The two Larkin "Birdie" Newhouse tales, along with two flashback vignettes by Flint, begin The Ram Rebellion; all four are set in the weeks immediately after the Ring of Fire. In the Flint stories which are sandwiched around the Birdie tales, Mike Stearns goes back to school under the tutelage of Melissa Mailey. Stearns, newly elected Chairman of the Grantville Emergency Committee, wishes to get a handle on likely complications from the local population. Mailey presents him with several very thick history books on European history in the era.