Submitted here is my introduction to my annotated translation of the Henryków Book, titled Local Society in Transition, whose reference matter appears in the Books section of this website. This introduction contextualizes the Book and its authors in the genres of historical writing of which it is an example, and in the monastic, political, economic, and seigneurial world of medieval Silesia, and Piast Poland in general. It is designed to offer an entrée into the history of those two polities, as well as of the text and the monastery. (My most recent book, The Text and the World, also represented in the Books section, takes these aims in several further directions.) I am most grateful to Fred Unwalla of the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, for permission to place the entire text on this website.