Here are 100 books that The Rise of the Polish Monarchy fans have personally recommended if you like
The Rise of the Polish Monarchy.
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I became enthusiastic about the history of the Baltics when my dissertation advisor persuaded me to use my language training in German and Russian to test the American Frontier Theory in the Baltic region. None of the various theories were applicable, but I earned a Ph.D. anyway. Later I taught in Italy, Yugoslavia, Estonia, and the Czech Republic. I've written a number of books and won a Fulbright Hays grant, the Dr. Arthur Puksow Foundation prize, the Vitols Prize, and others. I retired in 2017 after fifty-one years of university and college teaching, but I would still be teaching if my hearing had not deteriorated to the point that I could not make out what shy students were saying.
This wide-ranging, erudite, and witty account remains the most enjoyable survey of the era. His explanations of complex ideas and events cut through many of the difficulties involved in understanding a very different time and different places than our own. I especiallly liked the way he could tie the crusades in the Baltic to what was happening elsewhere in Europe and in the Holy Land, and to show how contemporaries wrestled with difficult, even contradictory, ideas.
I became enthusiastic about the history of the Baltics when my dissertation advisor persuaded me to use my language training in German and Russian to test the American Frontier Theory in the Baltic region. None of the various theories were applicable, but I earned a Ph.D. anyway. Later I taught in Italy, Yugoslavia, Estonia, and the Czech Republic. I've written a number of books and won a Fulbright Hays grant, the Dr. Arthur Puksow Foundation prize, the Vitols Prize, and others. I retired in 2017 after fifty-one years of university and college teaching, but I would still be teaching if my hearing had not deteriorated to the point that I could not make out what shy students were saying.
This is a provocative book. Its very title suggests how difficult it is to understand Polish history than other that a divine joke. Yet his scholarship is excellent and his insights enlightening.
This is especially true for the first volume, which deals with the emergence of the Polish kingdom from rude barbarism to a political and cultural force so powerful that, after its union with Lithuania, dominated East Central Europe for generations. The total collapse of the kingdom in the 18th century—largely to defects in the constitution that allowed foreign interference in the election of the king—has blinded us to what Poland achieved in those forgotten centuries.
The most comprehensive survey of Polish history available in English, God's Playground demonstrates Poland's importance in European history from medieval times to the present. Abandoning the traditional nationalist approach to Polish history, Norman Davies instead stresses the country's rich multinational heritage and places the development of the Jewish German, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian communities firmly within the Polish context. Davies emphasizes the cultural history of Poland through a presentation of extensive poetical, literary, and documentary texts in English translation. In each volume, chronological chapters of political narrative are interspersed with essays on religious, social, economic, constitutional, philosophical, and diplomatic themes. This…
I became enthusiastic about the history of the Baltics when my dissertation advisor persuaded me to use my language training in German and Russian to test the American Frontier Theory in the Baltic region. None of the various theories were applicable, but I earned a Ph.D. anyway. Later I taught in Italy, Yugoslavia, Estonia, and the Czech Republic. I've written a number of books and won a Fulbright Hays grant, the Dr. Arthur Puksow Foundation prize, the Vitols Prize, and others. I retired in 2017 after fifty-one years of university and college teaching, but I would still be teaching if my hearing had not deteriorated to the point that I could not make out what shy students were saying.
The Germans and Poles moved into a land inhabited by flourishing native tribes that have previously been understood only through the observations of German and Polish chroniclers.
Pluskowski shows that the native peoples had a sophisticated local economy that was hardly changed by the German conquerors. That is, wherever the Teutonic Order and its associated bishops and abbots brought in German or Dutch colonists, the farming practices reflected those of the immigrants’ homelands; however, the three-field system required farmers to work together, while the original inhabitants preferred to retain individual farms worked on the two-field system. The three-field system produced more food, but the Native Prussians valued their freedom more.
This is a very detailed study, with abundant information on what people ate, how they lived, and how they were buried.
The Archaeology of the Prussian Crusade explores the archaeology and material culture of the crusade against the Prussian tribes in the 13th century, and the subsequent society created by the Teutonic Order which lasted into the 16th century. It provides the first synthesis of the material culture of a unique crusading society created in the south-eastern Baltic region over the course of the 13th century. It encompasses the full range of archaeological data, from standing buildings through to artefacts and ecofacts, integrated with written and artistic sources. The work is sub-divided into broadly chronological themes, beginning with a historical outline,…
I became enthusiastic about the history of the Baltics when my dissertation advisor persuaded me to use my language training in German and Russian to test the American Frontier Theory in the Baltic region. None of the various theories were applicable, but I earned a Ph.D. anyway. Later I taught in Italy, Yugoslavia, Estonia, and the Czech Republic. I've written a number of books and won a Fulbright Hays grant, the Dr. Arthur Puksow Foundation prize, the Vitols Prize, and others. I retired in 2017 after fifty-one years of university and college teaching, but I would still be teaching if my hearing had not deteriorated to the point that I could not make out what shy students were saying.
This is a look at the evolving Lithuanian state at a key moment in its efforts to fight off western crusaders, expand to the east against Russians and south against Mongols, and accommodate its society and religious practices to its allies and subject peoples.
This was the era when the modern states of Belarus and Ukraine were forming under Lithuanian rule or protection. The cities of those regions, as well as the princes, were all Orthodox Christians, but they preferred being governed by tolerant pagans who lived among them than being heavily taxed by Muslim nomads who despised them.
In the decades to follow, Lithuanians would be deeply influenced by Polish culture and religious thought, so the conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1387 came as no surprise.
From 1250 to 1795 Lithuania covered a vast area of eastern and central Europe. Until 1387 the country was pagan. How this huge state came to expand, defend itself against western European crusaders and play a conspicuous part in European life are the main subjects of this book. Chapters are devoted to the types of sources used, to the religion of the ancient Balts (and the discovery of a pagan temple in Vilnius in the late 1980s), and to Lithuanian relations and wars with Poland and the Germans. Under Grand Duke Gediminas, Lithuania came to control more of Russia than…
I’m the author of multiple middle grade and YA historical novels, including Torch, which won the 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature. Torch takes place in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and it is especially timely in the face of the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Bear (a popular symbol of the Russian Empire) has mauled many of its neighbors in the past century, not only Czechoslovakia and Ukraine but also the Baltic countries that, like Ukraine, were incorporated into the Soviet Union and the other Eastern European countries that were part of the Soviet bloc until the fall of Communism in 1989.
While there’s no shortage of WWII books for teens, this companion to Traitor is among the few that presents the eastern front and Ukrainian and Polish resistance fighters who battled each other, the Nazis, and the Soviets.
Today’s alliance between Poland and Ukraine reflects their mutual experience of oppression at the hands of larger powers that transcends their own historic differences. The unlikely romance in The Silent Unseen serves as a microcosm of this process.
Poland, July 1944. Sixteen-year-old Maria is making her way home after years of forced labor in Nazi Germany, only to find her village destroyed and her parents killed in a war between the Polish Resistance and Ukrainian nationalists. To Maria's shock, the local Resistance unit is commanded by her older brother, Tomek-who she thought was dead. He is now a "Silent Unseen," a special-operations agent with an audacious plan to resist a new and even more dangerous enemy sweeping in from the East. When Tomek disappears, Maria is determined to find him, but the only person who might be able…
I’ve been fascinated by Central and Eastern Europe all of my adult life. Many cruises along the Danube and around the Baltic Sea have allowed me to see the stunning best of the region. Since the early 1990s, I’ve taught the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Habsburg Monarchy, and the Russian Empire to a generation of students. Professor of Polish-Lithuanian History at University College London since 2013, my next challenge is to promote the history of Poland to allcomers via the Polish History Museum in Warsaw, the wonderful city which is my home.
This modern classic is still a must-read for my students nearly twenty years after its first publication. Nothing else comes close to its sweep over time and space as it explains how the legacies of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth continue to shape the relations between its successor nations and their founding narratives. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the protests in Belarus have made this well-written book even more essential to understanding the region.
From the bestselling author of On Tyranny comes a revealing history of the four modern national ideas that arose from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
"[A] fresh and stimulating look at the path to nationhood."-Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs
"Erudite and engrossing."-Charles King, Times Literary Supplement
Modern nationalism in northeastern Europe has often led to violence and then reconciliation between nations with bloody pasts. In this fascinating book, Timothy Snyder traces the emergence of Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Belarusian nationhood over four centuries, discusses various atrocities (including the first account of the massive Ukrainian-Polish ethnic cleansings of the 1940s), and examines Poland's recent…
I’ve always been fascinated by history, by the way that the past informs the present, how it makes us who we are. And I’ve found myself drawn, as a reader and as a writer, towards those stories that incorporate some element of magic into the past. I’ve written two magical historical novels. And my third book, which I hope to be finished with soon, is a fabulist tale set in the future, which I like to say is history that hasn’t happened yet.
Yes, it’s almost a thousand pages long. But this sprawling magical historical novel by the Nobel Prize winner is one of the best books I’ve read in years. Following the rise and fall of the 18th-century Jewish mystic and would-be messiah, Jacob Frank, the novel paints a vivid picture of a vibrant multicultural society in Poland and beyond.
In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas begin to sweep the continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires, throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks…
My professional and personal interests in the Russian Empire began with a trip to St. Petersburg and Moscow I took as a college student in January 1992. The Soviet Union had officially collapsed the previous month: I was able to meet with ordinary citizens, hear their stories, and experience what the end of an empire looked like on the ground. I started to learn the Russian language–including one summer spent in Kazan, on the Volga River–and earned my doctorate in modern Russian History. My job as a history professor has allowed me to travel to Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, all helping me to understand the lingering effects of Russia’s imperial projects.
As the Russian Empire collapsed and descended into civil war between 1918 and 1922, peasants, townspeople, and soldiers murdered over 100,000 Jewish residents in the Ukrainian lands. Jeffrey Veidlinger’s well-written, deeply researched account of this violence helped me understand what happens when empires disintegrate, and ordinary people are caught up in as well as participate in violence over contested territories.
For me, Veidlinger’s main achievement in this book is twofold: first, exploring the complex, horrific reasons why so many imperial peoples engaged in violence, and second, how the murders “explain how the next wave of anti-Jewish violence became possible.”
A riveting account of a forgotten holocaust: the slaughter of over one hundred thousand Ukrainian Jews in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. In the Midst of Civilized Europe repositions the pogroms as a defining moment of the twentieth century.
'Exhaustive, clearly written, deeply researched' - The Times
'A meticulous, original and deeply affecting historical account' - Philippe Sands, author of East West Street
Between 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine by peasants, townsmen, and soldiers who blamed the Jews for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In hundreds of separate incidents, ordinary people…
My passion for writing historical fiction set mainly in Poland, or including Polish protagonists is born from my own familial history. My grandfather was forced into the Wehrmacht as a young man, who managed to escape to the UK and join the Polish Army in exile, eventually going back to fight against the Germans. His story set me on a course to become a historical fiction author; reimagining the past and bringing little-known stories to a wider audience. I find that the best way to gain a basic understanding of Polish life during WWII is to read widely – try historical accounts, memoirs, second-hand accounts, and of course, historical fiction.
Poland is a historical novel that spans Polish history all the way back to 1240, and continues on to cover various years, including WWI, WWII, and up to the early 1980s. The book is centered around three interconnected families throughout this investigation into their pasts, and is a must-read in terms of truly understanding and getting an authentic view into Polish lives throughout the ages. I feel that this book is a stand-out in terms of the authenticity it achieves.
“A Michener epic is far more than a bedtime reader, it’s an experience. Poland is a monumental effort, a magnificent guide to a better understanding of the country’s tribulations.”—Chicago Tribune
In this sweeping novel, James A. Michener chronicles eight tumultuous centuries as three Polish families live out their destinies. The Counts Lubonski, the petty nobles Bukowksi, and the peasants Buk are at some times fiercely united, at others tragically divided. With an inspiring tradition of resistance to brutal invaders, from the barbarians to the Nazis, and a heritage of pride that burns through eras of romantic passion and courageous solidarity,…
I’ve been fascinated by social history since childhood, although I didn’t know that was what it was called, back then. When I did a postgraduate Masters in Folk Life Studies, it helped to confirm my love of books that, in skilfully fictionalising historical events, allow us to see them through the eyes of people most closely affected by them: ordinary people leading their lives throughout difficult and dangerous times or finding themselves in extraordinary relationships. It’s what I try to do in my own work, fiction and non-fiction alike. My book recommendations here are the kind of books I wish I had written.
I came across this novel when I was researching my book, although I had been aware of author Neal Ascherson’s expert writing about Poland and Ukraine for many years.
This is a big, engrossing piece of fiction, based on real events, moving deftly between wartime Scotland and Poland, skilfully portraying the complexities of conflict. As well as an engrossing story, it is one of the best evocations I have read of the unholy muddle of war, where so much that happens is down to fallible human beings trying to cope with appalling situations.
For me, it also made sense of so much that I had found hard to understand about my Polish family history but I suspect anyone whose forebears were refugees might find it enlightening and moving.
A STORY OF SABOTAGE, BETRAYAL AND THE TERRIBLE SADNESS OF EXILE.
'Remarkable'The Times.
'A magnificent novel'The Times.
'Gripping'The Spectator.
Scotland, 1940: The Fronsac, a French warship, blows up in the Firth of Clyde. The disaster is witnessed by three locals. Jackie, a young girl who thinks she caused the explosiong by running away from school. Her mother Helen, a spirited woman married to a dreary young officer; and their lodger, a Polish soldier whose country has just been erased from the map by Hitler and Stalin.
All their lives will be changed by the death of the Fronsac.
