Gods Playground: A History of Poland, Vol. 2: 1795 to the Present by Norman Davies

Gods Playground: A History of Poland, Vol. 2: 1795 to the Present Reviews

• 
  Georgia Scott

  Like a Polish table set for guests, it's all here. Serving after serving. Scoops and more. Helpings are lavish and elegantly delivered. Never rushed. No. You've got to sit and sit and sit. For hours. Days even. The circulation will go from your legs. Your fear of getting deep vein thrombosis on long haul flights will be as nothing to reading this. Dense with detail, anecdotes, excerpts from letters, conversations, poetry, you name it, Davies delivers. And this is just one of two volumes. The end chapters on the Solidarity movement and failure of communism are the dessert worth waiting for.
  Sernik. Makowiec. Szarlotka. That's cheesecake, poppyseed cake, and apple pie. Go on. Indulge yourself.
• 
  Czarny Pies

  I greatly admire the first volume of Norman Davies' history of Poland. I absolutely love the second. I know a number of women who teach in the local Saturday Polish school that both my children attended. Finally, an author gives the volunteer Polish school teachers some long overdue praise. Davies writes:
  
  "The typical Polish Patriot of the turn of century was not the revolutionary with a revolver in his pocket, but the young lady of a good family with a textbook under her shawl."
  
  Yes, it was the volunteer school teachers that kept the Polish language and culture alive for 125 years when no Polish state existed. Due to the efforts of similar women in North America, Poles retained pride in their culture through several generations. When the Solidarity movement appeared Polish North Americans responded with generous and vital financial support while their governments rigorously avoided commitment.
  
  After describing how the Poles created a national culture in the nineteenth century at a time when their was no Polish state, Davies next tells the story of the remarkable General Pilsudski who opportunistically created a new Polish State in 1918 when the Austrian, German and Russian empires all crumbled at the same time.
  
  The Polish Renaissance proved to be short as Germany and Russia carved up Poland again in 1939. The Poland that emerged at the end of the war bore little resemblance to the one that existed at the beginning.
  
  In 1939 Polish speaking Catholics accounted for just slightly more than half of the population. There were large numbers of Orthodox Christians, Lutherans and Jews in the country. Native speakers of Yiddish, German, Lithuanian and Ukrainian made up roughly 45% of the population. The Nazis liquidated the Jews. The Russians expelled the Germans to the West. They cut the Eastern part of Poland off and gave it to the Ukraine. Ukrainians resident in the area given to Poland were sent to the Ukraine while the Poles in the Ukrainian area had to go East. Similar population movements occurred between Lithuania and Poland. The result for Poland was a monolithic Polish-speaking Catholic population. Poland thus became something it had never been before.
  
  Davies finishes off the century with the Poles free from Russian control and resolutely moving forward. This is a great read.
• 
  Jennifer

  Overall good but I skipped the contemporary sections, especially when the author started to talk about his own book being so great....
• 
  Julio Pino

  "Goodbye, my socialist friends. I am stepping off at Polish Independence Station while wishing you good luck on your journey to utopia."--- Josef Piłsudski, Poland's interwar dictator, addressing his former Bolshevik colleagues. By one of those strange coincidences that only history can produce Piłsudski's brother and the older brother of Vladimir Ulyanov, the future Lenin, were both hanged by the Russian regime for the same plot to assassinate the Czar. The history of Poland is inseparable from that of her three giant neighbors, Russia, Germany and Lithuania (once a giant, now a dwarf). Davies, a British historian, makes no bones about siding with the Poles in this multi-century dispute. Indeed, his first book examined the Soviet-Polish War of 1919-1921 (which made the careers of everyone from Stalin to Charles De Gaulle). Yet, his bias does not detract from our reading of this exhaustive volume and its predecessor. To paraphrase Porfirio Diaz, "Poor Poland; so close to God and so close the Germany and Russia---even today."
• 
  Tomek Gunia

  Ciekawa historia Polski trochę z innej perspektywy, są drobne niedomowienia i braki, ale mimo wszystko polecam.
• 
  Seth Peters

  Informative but boring and a big mess of acronyms. Reads more like a textbook than a book. Not how I like to read my history
• 
  Emily

  Like Vol. 1, except that, given the time period, it was more heart-breaking. The type-setting is atrocious, to the point where it becomes distracting. Very obvious that the author is enamored of Poland, and I wonder if that swings his bias a bit. Still, the only comprehensive story of Poland. Well worth the time.
• 
  Jeff DeRosa

  Five stars in terms of depth and research. Two stars pertaining to readability. Do not be fooled; this is a text book! Yes, it's an essential read packed with knowledge about Poland. However, be ready for the grind of reading a text book!
• 
  Nick

  Extremely comprehensive, but much less readable than Volume 1, and with many more editing and spelling errors. The last several chapters were a bit heavy-handed in promoting the author's book.
  
  Overall, it has a wide scope, and includes footnotes and bibliography covering the history of the divided regions of Poland, various risings, cultural history, the interwar period, World War II, the Soviet period, and the Solidarity movement.
• 
  Jan Hidders

  The second volume of "God's Playground" will tell you about how the Polish spirit survived during the time of partitions when there was no real Polish state to speak off, how the Polish Nation was briefly resurrected between the two World Wars, the dramatic events during WW2, how after 1945 the People's republic was forged into its modern form by brutal force, and finally how it managed to free itself from Communism and Soviet domination.
  
  
  
  The book is probably a bit daunting and too detailed for the casual non-Polish reader who just wants an overview of Polish history, as was the case for me. However, the incredible breadth and depth of Davies knowledge, his story-telling skills and his even-handedness hugely impressed me, and what I expected to become somewhat of a struggle turned out to be a really interesting and pleasant journey. It certainly made me more appreciative of the fact that historical developments are almost never as simple and straightforward as they seem at first sight, especially in Poland. :-)
  
  
  
  PS. After reading this book I found out that there is apparently some controversy over the fact that Norman Davies, according to some, downplays the anti-semitism in Poland, specifically during WW2, and he is even accused of supporting Polish nationalism. Without claiming any authority or expertise whatsoever, I'd like to say that after reading this book I find such accusations completely ridiculous.
• 
  Matthew Dambro

  An absolute masterwork of historical analysis. Dr. Davies has long been considered the Dean of Eastern European studies. He proves it in this two volume work on Poland. I must warn the reader that the sheer amount of suffering and bloodshed of the Polish people at the hands of the Nazis and the Communists from 1939 to 1990 makes for some is described in detail. It will make you physically ill to read it. But the truth is there. It permeates the book. It is a fitting tribute to the Polish Spirit.
• 
  Vanjr

  Long, info overload, iconic, maddening. Welcome to Professor Davies.
  
  On page 60 of 591 of God's Playground: Page 56, beginning of a paragraph regarding Polish nationalism, Norman Davies writes:
  
  "The proliferating profusion of possible political permutations among the pullulating peoples and parties of the Polish provinces in this period palpably prevented the propagation of permanent pacts between potential partners"
  
  ????
  
  Page 356 Has some of the most chilling and amazing episodes of WW2 and the Polish Jewish and Polish Catholic resistance to the Germans.
• 
  Mieczyslaw Kasprzyk

  I rate Norman Davies very highly but I have to say that I think that in his "God's Playground" he takes a lot for granted in his readers - it is almost as if he is expecting one to be coming to the books with a lot of knowledge already and so he jumps around a lot in his discussion of events and topics. There is much to be savoured but one has to work at it.
• 
  Ewa

  I must say that bring completely different than previously expected I actually loved almost every bit of it. The skilful combination of chronological description and various (economics/politics/religion/sociology) analyses makes it a must if you're thinking about learning about history of Poland.
• 
  Moominboy

  This is a rarity: a book on history of Poland written by a non-Pole. As with his other books it's a page-turner, and he brings a foreigner's refreshing perspective on Polish history.
• 
  Maa

  One of the few civilizations that has remained intact regardless of boundaries drawn on a physical map. How'd they do that? This book answers a great deal of that question.
• 
  Muhammad Zain ul abidin

  Definitely a worth a read to understand recent Polish history (1795 onward)
• 
  Jon

  Excellent read