Product Description: This book traces this tumultuous historical moment in the lives and memories of the nobilityof Silesia, a region ceded to Poland in 1945. Based on interviews with multiple generations of Silesian aristocratic family members and archival records, the study cautiously explores a sensitive subject in political remembrance while at the same time filling an important desideratum in contemporary research on aristocracy...read more

Product Description: Between 1914 and the present day the political makeup of the Balkans has relentlessly changed, following unpredictable shifts of international and internal borders. Between and across these borders various political communities were formed, co-existed and (dis)integrated...read more

Product Description: Beginning in 1948, the Soviet Union launched a series of wildly ambitious projects to implement Joseph Stalin's vision of a total "transformation of nature." Intended to increase agricultural yields dramatically, this utopian impulse quickly spread to the newly communist states of Eastern Europe, captivating political elites and war-fatigued publics alike...read more

Product Description: At the heart of today’s fierce political anger over income inequality is a feature of capitalism that Karl Marx famously obsessed over: the commodification of labor. Most of us think wage-labor economics is at odds with socialist thinking, but as Martha Lampland explains in this fascinating look at twentieth-century Hungary, there have been moments when such economics actually flourished under socialist regimes...read more

Product Description: Until the Second World War Poland was characteristically multi-cultural, with about one-third of its population belonging to minority communities. Today it stands out as a relatively culturally homogenous country.Rather than providing a simple narrative account of Polish history and the nation-building process, this book highlights those historical moments that have had a lasting impact on Polish identity debates and on the self-definition of the nation in various historical-political narratives...read more

In 1944, the Nazis razed Warsaw’s historic Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. “They knew that the strength of the Polish nation was rooted in the Cross, Christ’s Passion, the spirit of the Gospels, and the invincible Church,” argued Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński in a letter celebrating the building’s subsequent reconstruction. “To weaken and destroy the nation, they knew they must first deprive it of its Christian spirit.” Wyszynski insisted that Catholicism was an integral component of Polish history, culture, and national identity. The faithfulness of the Polish people fortified them during times of trial and inspired much that was noble and good in their endeavors.Filling a sizable gap in the literature, White Eagle, Black Madonna is a systematic study of the Catholic Church in Poland and among the Polish diaspora. Polish Catholicism has not been particularly well understood outside of Poland, and certainly not in the Anglophone world, until now. Demonstrating an unparalleled mastery of the topic, Robert E. Alvis offers an illuminating vantage point on the dynamic tension between centralization and diversity that long has characterized the Catholic Church’s history. Written in clear, concise, accessible language, the book sheds light on the relevance of the Polish Catholic tradition for the global Catholic Church, a phenomenon that has been greatly enhanced by Pope John Paul II, whose theology, ecclesiology, and piety were shaped profoundly by his experiences in Poland, and those experiences in turn shaped the course of his long and influential pontificate.Offering a new resource for understanding the historical development of Polish Catholicism, White Eagle, Black Madonna emphasizes the people, places, events, and ritual actions that have animated the tradition and that still resonate among Polish Catholics today. From the baptism of Duke Mieszko in 966 to the controversialburial of President Lech Kaczyński in 2010, the Church has accompanied the Polish people during their long and often tumultuous history. While often controversial, Catholicism’s influence over Poland’s political, social, and cultural life has been indisputably profound.

Product Description: As the most populous country in Eastern Europe as well as the birthplace of the largest anticommunist dissident movement, Poland is crucial in understanding the end of the Cold War. During the 1980s, both the United States and the Soviet Union vied for influence over Poland's politically tumultuous steps toward democratic revolution...read more

Product Description: Irish Drama in Poland is the first book to broadly assess Irish drama’s impact on both Poland’s theatrical world and its cultural and literary heritage in the twentieth century. With a wide-ranging analysis—from Yeats, Synge, O’Casey, and Behan, to Wilde, Shaw, and Beckett—this engaging study explores the translation, production, and reception of Irish plays in Poland...read more

Product Description: In der Anthologie werden Essays von |ber 40 prominenten Persönlichkeiten aus Deutschland veröffentlicht, die aufgrund ihres privaten und beruflichen Lebenslaufs eine Affinität zu Polen haben. Die Autorinnen und Autoren aus unterschiedlichen gesellschaftlichen Bereichen, insbesondere Politik, Wissenschaft, Kultur und Religion, schildern ihre individuellen Zugänge zu Polen und ihre Beziehungen zu den polnischen Nachbarn...read more

Product Description: Country of Ash is the starkly compelling, original chronicle of a Jewish doctor who miraculously survived near-certain death, first inside the Lodz and Warsaw ghettoes, where he was forced to treat the Gestapo, then on the Aryan side of Warsaw, where he hid under numerous disguises...read more

Product Description: Imagine you are nine years old. Your best friend's father is arrested, half your classmates disappear from school, and someone burns down the house across the road. Imagine you are 10 years old and have to cross a snow-covered mountain range at night in order to escape the soldiers who are trying to kill you...read more