New Releases by Norman Davies

Witamy na planecie Polska – w wyjątkowym miejscu o niezwykle bogatej historii. Jest tu pełno niespodzianek, chociaż nie wszystkie Państwa zachwycą. Civitas Schinesghe, Lechistan, Polska... Kraj ten od ponad tysiąca lat fascynował kupców i podróżników. Kolejni władcy powiększali terytorium, zawierali przymierza i unie, za sprawą których Rzeczpospolita stała się jedną z potęg Starego Kontynentu. Związanie się z tradycją Zachodu przez pierwszych Piastów było dziedzictwem, którego przyszło bronić potomkom Mieszków i Bolesławów. Wraz z odzyskaniem niepodległości XVII-wieczna koncepcja antemurale Christianitatis przyjęła formę walki z totalitaryzmami. Doświadczenia cudu nad Wisłą, II wojny światowej, komunizmu oraz wreszcie rok 2004 dowiodły, że miejsce Polski jest w Europie. Spoglądając w naszą przeszłość, Norman Davies dowodzi, że w XXI wieku misją i powinnością Polski jest przewodzenie w regionie i wspieranie tych, którzy chcą dołączyć do europejskiej wspólnoty. Niepublikowane wcześniej i zaktualizowane teksty Normana Daviesa zaskakują przenikliwością i stawiają przed Polską ponownie wyzwanie odegrania kluczowej roli w Europie. Powyższy opis pochodzi od wydawcy.

''He writes history like nobody else. He thinks like nobody else ... He sees the world as a whole, with its limitless fund of stories'' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times Where have the people in any particular place actually come from? What are the historical complexities in any particular place? This evocative historical journey around the world shows us. ''Human history is a tale not just of constant change but equally of perpetual locomotion'', writes Norman Davies. Throughout the ages, men and women have endlessly sought the greener side of the hill. Their migrations, collisions, conquests and interactions have given rise to the spectacular profusion of cultures, races, languages and polities that now proliferates on every continent. This incessant restlessness inspired Davies''s own. After decades of writing about European history, and like Tennyson''s ageing Ulysses longing for one last adventure, he embarked upon an extended journey that took him right round the world to a score of hitherto unfamiliar countries. His aims were to test his powers of observation and to revel in the exotic, but equally to encounter history in a new way. Beneath Another Sky is partly a historian''s travelogue, partly a highly engaging exploration of events and personalities that have fashioned today''s world - and entirely sui generis. Davies''s circumnavigation takes him to Baku, the Emirates, India, Malaysia, Mauritius, Tasmania, Tahiti, Texas, Madeira and many places in between. At every stop, he not only describes the current scene but also excavates the layers of accumulated experience that underpin the present. He tramps round ancient temples and weird museums, summarises the complexity of Indian castes, Austronesian languages and Pacific explorations, delves into the fate of indigenous peoples and of a missing Malaysian airliner, reflects on cultural conflict in Cornwall, uncovers the Nazi origins of Frankfurt airport and lectures on imperialism in a desert oasis. ''Everything has its history'', he writes, ''including the history of finding one''s way or of getting lost.'' The personality of the author comes across strongly - wry, romantic, occasionally grumpy, but with an endless curiosity and appetite for knowledge. As always, Norman Davies watches the historical horizon as well as what is close at hand, and brilliantly complicates our view of the past.

A detailed and highly illustrated account of the Polish II Corps'' (or ''Anders Army'') perilous journey to fight side by side with Allied forces at the height of World War II. Following the conquest of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, hundreds of thousands of Polish families were torn from their homes and sent eastwards to the arctic wastes of Siberia. Prisoners of war, refugees, those regarded as ''social criminals'' by Stalin''s regime, and those rounded up by sheer chance were all sent ''to see the Great White Bear''. However, with Hitler''s invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa just two years later, Russia and the Allied powers found themselves on the same side once more. Turning to those that it had previously deemed ''undesirable'', Russia sought to raise a Polish army from the men, women and children that it had imprisoned within its labour camps. In this remarkable work, renowned historian Professor Norman Davies draws from years of meticulous research to recount the compelling story of this unit, the Polish II Corps or ''Anders Army'', and their exceptional journey from the Gulag of Siberia through Iran, the Middle East and North Africa to the battlefields of Italy to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with Allied forces. Complete with previously unpublished photographs and first-hand accounts from the men and women who lived through it, this is a unique visual and written record of one of the most fascinating episodes of World War II.

The fascinating history of a Baltic empire’s dominance and decline—excerpted from internationally bestselling author Norman Davies’s Vanished Kingdoms Vanished Kingdoms introduces readers to once-powerful European empires that have left scant traces on the modern map. In this excerpt from his widely acclaimed book, Norman Davies tells the ill-fated story of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Founded in the mid-thirteenth century in one of the continent’s first settled regions, where the oldest of its Indo-European languages is spoken, the Grand Duchy at its peak was the largest country in Europe, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and it commanded yet greater influence after uniting with its western neighbor, the Kingdom of Poland, to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Grand Duchy’s huge territory included the great cities of Kiev, Vilnius, Riga, Minsk, and Brest. Despite being ahead of its time as an elective republic in an age of absolute monarchy, power struggles and foreign incursions led to its ultimate demise and forced partition by Russia, Prussia, and Austria in 1795. In this selection from a work The Boston Globe has called “commendably accessible, magisterial, and uncommonly humane,” Davies chronicles these rich yet unfamiliar chapters in the history of modern Lithuania, Belarus, and Latvia with his signature acuity and verve.

An evocative account of fourteen European kingdoms-their rise, maturity, and eventual disappearance. There is something profoundly romantic about lost civilizations. Europe''s past is littered with states and kingdoms, large and small, that are scarcely remembered today, and while their names may be unfamiliar-Aragon, Etruria, the Kingdom of the Two Burgundies-their stories should change our mental map of the past. We come across forgotten characters and famous ones-King Arthur and Macbeth, Napoleon and Queen Victoria, right up to Stalin and Gorbachev-and discover how faulty memory can be, and how much we can glean from these lost empires. Davies peers through the cracks in the mainstream accounts of modern-day states to dazzle us with extraordinary stories of barely remembered pasts, and of the traces they left behind. This is Norman Davies at his best: sweeping narrative history packed with unexpected insights. Vanished Kingdoms will appeal to all fans of unconventional and thought-provoking history, from readers of Niall Ferguson to Jared Diamond.

Surprisingly little known, the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-20 was to change the course of twentieth-century history. In White Eagle, Red Star, Norman Davies gives a full account of the War, with its dramatic climax in August 1920 when the Red Army - sure of victory and pledged to carry the Revolution across Europe to ''water our horses on the Rhine'' - was crushed by a devastating Polish attack. Since known as the ''miracle on the Vistula'', it remains one of the most decisive battles of the Western world. Drawing on both Polish and Russian sources, Norman Davies illustrates the narrative with documentary material which hitherto has not been readily available and shows how the War was far more an ''episode'' in East European affairs, but largely determined the course of European history for the next twenty years or more.

One of the world''s leading historians re-examines World War II and its outcome A clear-eyed reappraisal of World War II that offers new insight by reevaluating well-established facts and pointing out lesser-known ones, No Simple Victory asks readers to reconsider what they know about the war, and how that knowledge might be biased or incorrect. Norman Davies poses simple questions that have unexpected answers: Can you name the five biggest battles of the war? What were the main political ideologies that were contending for supremacy? The answers to these questions will surprise even those who feel that they are experts on the subject. Davies has established himself as a preeminent scholar of World War II. No Simple Victory is an invaluable contribution to twentieth-century history and an illuminating portrait of a conflict that continues to provoke debate.

The conventional narrative of the Second World War is well known: after six years of brutal fighting on land, sea and in the air, the Allied Powers prevailed and the Nazi regime was defeated. But as in so many things, the truth is somewhat different. Bringing a fresh eye to bear on a story we think we know, Norman Davies. Davies forces us to look again at those six years and to discard the usual narrative of Allied good versus Nazi evil, reminding us that the war in Europe was dominated by two evil monsters - Hitler and Stalin - whose fight for supremacy consumed the best people in Germany and in the USSR. The outcome of the war was at best ambiguous, the victory of the West was only partial, its moral reputation severely tarnished and, for the greater part of the continent of Europe, ''liberation'' was only the beginning of more than fifty years of totalitarian oppression. PRAISE FOR NORMAN DAVIES ''Davies writes with real knowledge and passion.'' Michael Burleigh, Evening Standard ''Punchy and compelling'' Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph

Collected here for the first time are some of the numerous essays and lectures by Norman Davies, author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed EUROPE, THE ISLES and RISING ''44. Spanning over a decade and a half of his remarkably prodigious career, this highly accessible collection addresses many of the issues that continue to dominate the political and cultural climate of Europe today.In EUROPE EAST AND WEST Davies argues for a comprehensive view that challenges Western stereotypes and no longer ignores the history and experience of Eastern Europe. He shows that the conventional exclusion of Central and Eastern Europe has led to serious shortcomings in our understanding of the most crucial episodes of European history, namely the Second World War. The essays collected in this volume confront prevalent distortions and prejudices; taken together, they also form a meditation on the art of history writing itself. From the classical origins of the idea of Europe to the division between East and West during the Cold War; from the Jewish and Islamic strands in European history to the expansion of Europe to other continents; from the misunderstood Allied victory in 1945 to Britain''s place in Europe; from reflections on the use and abuse of history to personal recollections on learning languages - this companion volume to the bestselling Europe looks at European history from a variety of unusual and entertaining angles in an equally erudite and accessible way.

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.

In a brilliant narrative of one of the most dramatic episodes in twentieth-century history, Davies spotlights sixty-three days in 1944 when the Wehrmacht crushed the Polish Resistance in Warsaw, slaughtered thousands and destroyed the city.

Begins with the period since 1945 and travels back in time to highlight themes and traditions that have influenced present attitudes. Analyses the issues arising from the fall of the Eastern Bloc and looks at Poland''s future within a political climate of democracy and free market.