Tourists visiting Poland are taken to see Krakow, the nations soul, where a new humanistic civilization was created and from which it spread. Indeed, the role of the Polish people hasnt only been as the defenders of the West but also as a pivot, a conduit by means of which ideas, knowledge, and technologies have moved through Europe and the world. This book is about the creativity and larger-than-life achievements of the daughters and sons of Poland.
Made in Poland: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of contemporary Polish popular music. Each essay, written by a leading scholar of Polish music, covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of pop music in Poland and provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance. The book first presents a general description of the history and background of popular music in Poland, followed by essays organized into thematic sections: Popular Music in the People’s Republic of Poland; Documenting Change and Continuity in Music Scenes and Institutions; and Music, Identity, and Critique.
"The author's search for the annihilated Polish community captured in his grandfather's 1938 home movie. Traveling in Europe in August 1938, one year before the outbreak of World War II, David Kurtz, the author's grandfather, captured three minutes of ordinary life in a small, predominantly Jewish town in Poland on 16 mm Kodachrome color film. More than seventy years later, through the brutal twists of history, these few minutes of home-movie footage would become a memorial to an entire community--an entire culture--that was annihilated in the Holocaust. Three Minutes in Poland traces Glenn Kurtz's remarkable four-year journey to identify the people in his grandfather's haunting images. His search takes him across the United States; to Canada, England, Poland, and Israel; to archives, film preservation laboratories, and an abandoned Luftwaffe airfield. Ultimately, Kurtz locates seven living survivors from this lost town, including an eighty-six-year-old man who appears in the film as a thirteen-year-old boy. Painstakingly assembled from interviews, photographs, documents, and artifacts, Three Minutes in Poland tells the rich, funny, harrowing, and surprisingly intertwined stories of these seven survivors and their Polish hometown. Originally a travel souvenir, David Kurtz's home movie became the sole remaining record of a vibrant town on the brink of catastrophe. From this brief film, Glenn Kurtz creates a riveting exploration of memory, loss, and improbable survival--a monument to a lost world"--
This is the story of Poland's arts and skills, and of her people, who helped make their country so outstanding in many fields -- weaving, ceramics, music, woodcarving, needlework are only a few in which the Poles do truly excellent work. -- Jacket flap.
Showcasing the extraordinary achievements of the proponents of Polish modernism from the 1890s to 1918, this ground-breaking book brings together pioneering research with beautiful imagery. Mloda Polska, or Young Poland, embraced the integration of fine and applied arts, motivated by a desire to establish a distinctive national style at a time of political uncertainty. Patriotic values were expressed through a diverse visual language that was fuelled by national identity, but also looked beyond Poland to Western Europe and the influences of Impressionism, Expressionism, Symbolism, Art Nouveau, while also displaying parallels with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. Young Poland's painting has been discussed within an international arena, but its decorative arts and architecture has yet to enjoy broad exposure. Here, for the first time, the considerable achievements of the movement's applied artists will be discussed, both from a national and international perspective. Highlighting Young Poland's integration of fine and decorative arts, the movement's ideological, stylistic and formal commonalities with British Arts and Crafts, and the vision of Ruskin and Morris, will be drawn out to provide fascinating insights for Western and Eastern audiences alike.
What makes countries rich? What makes countries poor? Europe's Growth Champion: Insights from the Economic Rise of Poland seeks to answer these questions, and many more, through a study of one of the biggest, and least heard about, economic success stories. Over the last twenty-five years Poland has transitioned from a perennially backward, poor, and peripheral country to unexpectedly join the ranks of the world's high income countries. Europe's Growth Champion is about the lessons learned from Poland's remarkable experience, the conditions that keep countries poor, and the challenges that countries need to face in order to grow. It defines a new growth model that Poland and its Eastern European peers need to adopt to grow and catch up with their Western counterparts. Poland's economic rise emphasizes the importance of the fundamental sources of growth- institutions, culture, ideas, and leaders- in economic development. It demonstrates that a shift from an extractive society, where the few rule for the benefit of the few, to an inclusive society, where many rule for the benefit of many, can be the key to economic success. *IEurope's Growth Champion asserts that a newly emerged inclusive society will support further convergence of Poland and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe with the West, and help to sustain the region's Golden Age. It also acknowledges the future challenges that Poland faces, and that moving to the core of the European economy will require further reforms and changes in Poland's developmental character.
'One of the funniest books of the year' - Paul Ross, talkRADIO WARNING: CONTAINS AN UNLIKELY IMMIGRANT, AN UNSUNG COUNTRY, A BUMPY ROMANCE, SEVERAL SHATTERED PRECONCEPTIONS, TRACES OF INSIGHT, A DOZEN NUNS AND A REFERENDUM. Not many Brits move to Poland to work in a fish and chip shop. Fewer still come back wanting to be a Member of the European Parliament. In 2016 Ben Aitken moved to Poland while he still could. It wasn't love that took him but curiosity: he wanted to know what the Poles in the UK had left behind. He flew to a place he'd never heard of and then accepted a job in a chip shop on the minimum wage. When he wasn't peeling potatoes he was on the road scratching the country's surface: he milked cows with a Eurosceptic farmer; missed the bus to Auschwitz; spent Christmas with complete strangers and went to Gdansk to learn how communism got the chop. By the year's end he had a better sense of what the Poles had turned their backs on - southern mountains, northern beaches, dumplings! - and an uncanny ability to bone cod. This is a candid, funny and offbeat tale of a year as an unlikely immigrant.
You can count on Rick Steves to tell you what you really need to know when traveling in Krakow, Warsaw, and Gdansk. In this compact guide, Rick Steves and Cameron Hewitt cover the essentials of Krakow, Warsaw, and Gdansk, including The Tri-City. Visit Krakow's stunning Main Market Square, Warsaw's historical Royal Way, or Gdansk's Main Town Hall, featuring Golden Age decorations. You'll get firsthand advice on the best sights, eating, sleeping, and nightlife, and the maps and self-guided tours will ensure you make the most of your experience. More than just reviews and directions, a Rick Steves Snapshot guide is a tour guide in your pocket.
PAPERBACK ORIGINAL From an award-winning documentary photographer, the first book of its kind to portray the LGBTQ community in contemporary Poland Few in the Polish LGBTQ community could have foreseen how quickly this deeply conservative and Catholic country would change since it joined the European Union. Back in 2004, gay rights marches were banned in Warsaw and homosexuality was a taboo subject. Since then, as the economy has grown, the LGBTQ community has become more widely accepted. In OUT, award-winning Warsaw-based photographer Maciek Nabrdalik, whose work has been published in Smithsonian, L'Espresso, Stern, Newsweek, and the New York Times, takes us deep into this community. Exploring issues of identity and citizenship and taking its inspiration from the passport photo format, OUT features dozens of formal portraits of writers, artists, and everyday people working in a variety of occupations from across Poland. Each portrait is accompanied by a short interview and is shaded to indicate how comfortable that person is with revealing their own sexuality publicly. Intimate and profoundly humane, OUT is a testament to the great strides that can be made in the struggle for LGBTQ rights in a short space of time—a document that will be inspiring to other nations where the queer community does not enjoy the same freedoms. OUT was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).
Polish Your Kitchen: My Family Table is a collection of recipes handed down from generation to generation, featuring more than 100 classic Polish dishes from the author's family home and reflecting the traditional flavors and cooking styles of the Polish hearth. This book is perfect for anyone that wants to bring a taste of Poland into their home.
