The History of Poland: A Fascinating Guide to this European Country Paperback – 1 Oct. 2020

this short book is idea for those who wish to know a basic introduction to a country with a very complex history. The short chapters on a range of subjects give insights into how much the nation has suffered and its determination to remain a recognised country.

They say you get what you pay for but in this case barely that. This “history” of Poland is cheap but runs to only 60 pages of which 5 are a garbled and unnecessary introduction and approximately half are not a history at all but chapters describing, in order, Poland’s modern economy, demographics, politics and geography. What little history there is has some glaring omissions, for example nothing about the legend of Lech, Čech and Rus and the founding of the 3 Slavic races and the origin of the Polish White Eagle and hardly anything about Frederick the Great, the war of the Polish succession and the annexation and various partitions of Poland or Poland during the Napoleonic wars. The whole section on the 20th century is brief and WW2 in particular superficial - no Katyn (only mentioned at all in the context of Lech Kaczinsky’s death in 2010!), General Anders, why the Poles were fighting at Monte Cassino. Not much on Stalin or communist rule post-war either although Auschwitz gets frequent mentions but without any details.Then, beware that there are things here that just might not be correct. Page 37 tells “Wroclaw…is known for its residents who are dwarfs, giving tourists the feeling they are reliving history…”Then there’s the actual prose which is extremely strange and difficult. There is no “biog” of author Andrew Green (his notes on Amazon tell us little except that he writes poetry) but it’s difficult to believe English is his native tongue; to me, the book reads as if someone had taken various Polish tourist office publications and similar, put them through Google translate and published the result with very little editing. I do not recommend this book.