The latest in books written by Polonian authors or that concern Polish and Polonian history, language and culture.
Save Send Delete by Danusha V. Goska
Save Send Delete is a debate about God between polar opposites: Mira, a poor, Catholic professor and Rand, an atheist author and celebrity. It’s based on a true story. Mira reveals gut-level emotions and her inner struggles to live fully and honestly – and to laugh – in the face of extraordinary ordeals. She shares experiences so profound, so holy, they force us to confront our beliefs in what is true and possible. Rand hears her; he understands her; he challenges her ideas; he makes her more of herself. The book is in essence a love story. What emerges from these eternal questions is not so much about God, but what faith means to us, and ultimately, what we mean to each other.
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Solidarity: The Great Workers Strike of 1980 by Michael M. Szporer
n the summer of 1980, the eyes of the world turned to the Gdansk shipyard in Poland which suddenly became the nexus of a strike wave that paralyzed the entire country. The Gdansk strike was orchestrated by the members of an underground free trade union that came to be known as Solidarnosc [Solidarity]. Despite fears of a violent response from the communist authorities, the strikes spread to more than 750 sites around the country and involved over a million workers, mobilizing its working population. Faced with crippling strikes and with the eyes of the world on them, the communist regime signed landmark accords formally recognizing Solidarity as the first free trade union in a communist country. The union registered nearly ten million members, making it the world’s largest union to date. In a widespread and inspiring demonstration of nonviolent protest, Solidarity managed to bring about real and powerful changes that contributed to the end of the Cold War.
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The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture by Larry Wolff
Galicia was created at the first partition of Poland in 1772 and disappeared in 1918. Yet, in slightly over a century, the idea of Galicia came to have meaning for both the peoples who lived there and the Habsburg government that ruled it. Indeed, its memory continues to exercise a powerful fascination for those who live in its former territories and for the descendants of those who emigrated out of Galicia.
The idea of Galicia was largely produced by the cultures of two cities, Lwów and Kraków. Making use of travelers’ accounts, newspaper reports, and literary works, Wolff engages such figures as Emperor Joseph II, Metternich, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Ivan Franko, Stanislaw Wyspianski, Tadeusz “Boy” Zelenski, Isaac Babel, Martin Buber, and Bruno Schulz. He shows the exceptional importance of provincial space as a site for the evolution of cultural meanings and identities, and analyzes the province as the framework for non-national and multi-national understandings of empire in European history.
Lukasz Wodzynski, writing in the Cosmopolitan Review calls the book: “A rich and engaging tale about Galicia and its four ethnic groups – Poles, Austrian Germans, Ruthenians and Jews – all of whom assigned a different meaning to the “idea” of Galicia.
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Freedom Climbers by Bernadette McDonald
Between 1980 and 1989, Polish climbers were giant, worldwide leaders as high-altitude climbers, especially in the Himalayas. This volume documents those charismatic leaders and their iconic climbs in a defining chapter of Himalayan climbing history.
Renowned author Bernadette McDonald weaves a passionate and literary tale of adventure, politics, suffering, death and ultimately inspiration. Freedom Climbers tells the story of a group of extraordinary Polish adventurers who emerged from under the blanket of oppression following the Second World War to become the worlds leading Himalayan climbers. Although they lived in a dreary, war-ravaged landscape, with seemingly no hope of creating a meaningful life, these curious, motivated and skilled mountaineers created their own free-market economy under the very noses of their Communist bosses and climbed their way to liberation.
Patrice Dabrowski reviews Freedom Climbers for the Cosmopolitan Review discussing the gripping and heart-wrenching chronicle of the greatest Himalayan climbers of the 20th century.
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Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power by Andrew Nagorski
Hitler’s rise to power, Germany’s march to the abyss, as seen through the eyes of Americans—diplomats, military, expats, visiting authors, Olympic athletes—who watched horrified and up close. By tapping a rich vein of personal testimonies, Hitlerland offers a gripping narrative full of surprising twists—and a startlingly fresh perspective on this heavily dissected era.
Some of the Americans in Weimar and then Hitler’s Germany were merely casual observers, others deliberately blind; a few were Nazi apologists. But most slowly began to understand the horror of what was unfolding, even when they found it difficult to grasp the breadth of the catastrophe.
Among the journalists, William Shirer, Edgar Mowrer, and Dorothy Thompson were increasingly alarmed. Consul General George Messersmith stood out among the American diplomats because of his passion and courage.
Tina Brown of NPR Books called Hitlerland a must-read in The Reporter’s Role.
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City of the Big Shoulders: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry by Ryan G. Van Cleave.
Dr. John Guzlowski’s “38 Easy Steps to Carlyle’s Everlasting Yeah.” is included in the book along with work by Stuart Dybek.
Chicago has served as touchstone and muse to generations of writers and artists defined bytheir relationship to the city’s history, lore, inhabitants, landmarks, joys and sorrows, pride and shame. The poetic conversations inspired by Chicago have long been a vital part of America’s literary landscape, from Carl Sandburg and Gwendolyn Brooks to experimental writers and today’s slam poets. The one hundred contributors to this vibrant collection take their materials and their inspirations from the city itself in a way that continues this energetic dialogue.
The cultural, ethnic, and aesthetic diversity in this gathering of poems springs from a variety of viewpoints, styles, and voices as multifaceted and energetic as the city itself.
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Stained Glass by Catherine Czerkawska
Stained Glass is a trio of ghost stories: the title story, The Penny Execution and The Sleigh.
In Stained Glass, a young man sees more than he bargained for through his cottage window.
The Penny Execution is about a saleroom acquisition with a terrible secret.
The Sleigh is a quirky and sad story about a strange experience in pre-war Poland.
The first two stories are entirely fictional but the Sleigh is true and was the inspiration behind one of the episodes in Catherine’s new novel, The Amber Heart. This novel, based on her Polish family history, is also available.
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Show Up, Look Good by Mark Wisniewski
Wisniewski shows what really happens when a resourceful, optimistic, upbeat young woman from the Midwest comes to Manhattan to make it.” — Molly Giles, author of ‘Rough Translations’ “With equal parts rue and satire, Mark Wisniewski’s thirty-four-year-old Midwestern heroine, Michelle, flees love gone wrong at home to start over with nerve and independence in Manhattan. Her picaresque misadventures and her encounters with characters odd, pretentious, and menacing prove as haunting as Holden Caulfield’s.” — DeWitt Henry, editor of ‘Ploughshares’
Mark Wisniewski is the author of the novel “Confessions of a Polish Used Car Salesman,” the collection of short stories “All Weekend With the Lights On,” and the book of narrative poems “One of Us One Night.” His fiction has appeared in magazines such as “The Southern Review,” “Antioch Review,” “New England Review,” “Virginia Quarterly Review,” “The Yale Review,” “Boulevard,” “The Sun,” and “The Georgia Review,” and has been anthologized in “Pushcart Prize” and “Best American Short Stories.” His narrative poems have appeared in such venues as “Poetry International,” “Ecotone,” “New York Quarterly,” and “Poetry.”
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Novelist Leslie Pietrzyk has a new novel, Lady of the House, coming out soon about Polish immigrants in Chicago in 1900. A chapter is available for listening to at The Drum.
