The suggestive image of an “Iron Curtain” creating an airtight separation of East and Central Europe from the western part of the continent often prevent us from taking note of exchanges which took place across the divide from Szczecin to Trieste. Similarly, if we examine Cold War intellectual history, we tend to look on the…
For the new book by Katarzyna Kosior, Becoming a Queen in Early Modern Europe: East and West the author carefully studied ceremonial and quasi-ceremonial events (she does not specify, however, what she understands by the term “ceremonial”) in the lives of women who are to become queens in 16th-century France and Poland. The ways in…
The main goal of a historical exhibition is not to represent the truth about the past, but to promote a particular, desired vision of it. This statement is one of the core hypotheses of a new book by Anna Ziębińska-Witek. It is also the point of departure for a thought-provoking study on the identity-building process…
Jack Fairweather, The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz, Custom House: New York 2019 Less than three months have passed since the release of Jack Fairweather’s book, and it remains very popular. Polish media has thoroughly discussed the book, as have the media in Britain (The Times, The…
A brilliant strategist or a risk taker who was incurable but got lucky at a few key moments? A man of compromise, capable of coping with the greatest opponents when national interests demanded it, or an authoritative autocrat instead? A supporter of democracy, both radical and sincere, or a conservative at heart who readily found…
Just published in the 100 Lat Niepodległości. Pamiętniki i wspomnienia series (100 Years of Independence: Diaries and Memoirs), begun in 2013 by the Polish History Museum, is Czas przeszły dokonany (The Simple Past) by Adam Pragier, the three volumes of which stand out against the backdrop of twentieth-century Polish memoirs. Its author, however, is little…
