GOD'S PLAYGROUND. A HISTORY OF POLAND. VOL I. THE ORIGINS TO 1795. DAVIES N. Księgarnia

This new edition of Norman Davies's classic study of the history of Poland has been revised and fully updated with two new chapters to bring the story to the end of the twentieth century. The writing of Polish history, like Poland itself, has frequently fallen prey to interested parties. Professor Norman Davies adopts a sceptical stance towards all existing interpretations and attempts to bring a strong dose of common sense to his theme. He presents the most comprehensive survey in English of this frequently maligned and usually misunderstood country. Readership: Students and scholars of European history, especially students of Polish history.

Contents

Introduction. The Origins to 1572

1 Millenium: A Thousand Years of History

2 Polska: The Polish Land

3 Piast: The Polanian Dynasty (to 1370)

4 Anjou: The Hungarian Connection (1370-1386)

5 Jogaila: The Lithuanian Union (1386-1572)

The Life and Death of the Polish - Lithuanian Republic (1569-1795)

6 Antemurale: The Bulwark of Christendom (Religion)

7 The Nobelman's Paradise (Society)

8 Handel: The Baltic Grain Trade (Economy)

9 Miasto: The Vicissitudes of Urban Life (The Cities)

10 Anarchia: The Noble Democracy (The Constitution)

11 Serenissima: Diplomacy in Poland - Lithuania (Foreign Affairs)

12 Valois: The French Experiment (1572-1575)

13 Bathory: The Transylvanian Victor (1576-1586)

14 Vasa: The Swedish Connection (1587-1668)

15 Michal: The Austrian Candidate (1669-1673)

16 Sobieski: Terror of the Turk (1674-1696)

17 Wettin: The Saxon Era (1697-1763)

18 Agonia: The End of the Eussian Protectorate (1764-1795)

Sir Norman Davies (born June 8, 1939 in Bolton, Lancashire, England) is a British historian, noted for his publications on the history of Poland, Europe and the British Isles.

A disciple of A.J.P. Taylor, Davies studied history at Magdalen College, Oxford. After stays abroad in Grenoble, France, and Perugia, Italy, he intended to study for a Ph.D. in Russia, but was denied an entry visa. Instead, he went to Cracow to study at the Jagiellonian University and do research on the Polish-Soviet war. As this war did not officially exist in the Polish historiography of that time, he was obliged to changed the title of his dissertation to The British Foreign Policy towards Poland, 1919-20. After obtaining a Ph.D. in Cracow, the English text appeared under the title White Eagle, Red Star. The Polish-Soviet War 1919-20 in 1972.

From 1971, Davies taught Polish history at the School of East European and Slavonic Studies (SSEES) of the University of London, where he was professor from 1985 to 1996. Currently, he is Supernumary Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. Throughout his career, Davies lectured in many countries (USA, Canada, Australia, Japan, China, and in most European countries).

The work that established Davies's reputation in the English-speaking world was God's Playground (1981), a comprehensive overview of Polish history, which still ranks as the most influential. It made Davies immediately popular in Poland, although - or rather because - it could only be distributed as a samizdat copy. Against the backdrop of the current events in Poland, Davies published a more concise, essayistic description of the role of the past in Polish present, entitled Heart of Europe (1984).

In the 1990s, Davies returned with two monumental works on the history of Europe as a whole (1996) and the British Isles (1999). In both books he sets out to present the importance of the "peripheries" on an equal footing and to revise conventional wisdoms in historiography that he considers as Westernly biased and Anglo-centric, respectively.

Next, Davies and his former research assistant Roger Moorhouse co-wrote a history of Wrocław, the former German Breslau, at the suggestion of the city's mayor. The book considers the city a focal point of Central European history and uses it to present that history "in a nutshell". Although fellow historians criticised a number of technical defects in the book, it became an instant bestseller in both Germany and Poland, where it had been published simultaneously.

Davies also writes essays and popular articles for mass media audiences. Among others, he has worked for the BBC as well as British and American magazines and newspapers like The Times, The New York Review of Books and The Independent. In Poland, his articles appeared in the liberal Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny.

After 1989, God's Playground became required reading in Poland, where each subsequent book was immediately translated and became an instant commercial success. In 2000, Davies's Polish publishers Znak published a collection of his essays and articles under the title Smok wawelski nad Tamizą ("The Wawel Dragon on the Thames") which is not available in English.

Davies's most recent book, Rising '44 describes the Warsaw Uprising and was internationally well received on the occasion of its anniversary in 2004.

488 pages paperback

Po otrzymaniu zamówienia poinformujemy,
czy wybrany tytuł polskojęzyczny lub anglojęzyczny jest aktualnie na półce księgarni.