Heart of Europe: A Short History of Poland by Norman Davies
The startling political developments within Poland since 1980 have found many commentators in the West, though few have had the means to look beneath the surface and to glimpse the depth and antiquity of the issues involved in its current predicament. This book provides a key to understanding the social and political inheritance of modern Poland, whose present conflict is shown to be but only latest round in a series of Russo-Polish struggles stretching back nearly three centuries.