Professor Oscar Halecki’s A History of Poland has become a classic work in its field through its brilliant synthesis and interpretation of Polish history.

Antony Polonsky has added two chapters which cover the years under Gomulka and Gierek, and brings this new edition up to date with an account of the rise of Solidarity and the introduction of martial law.

The volume covers the consolidation of the peaceful tribes of the ‘Polanie’ into an organized Christian state in the tenth century; the complex medieval history under the first dynasty of rulers culminating in the great figure of the last of the Piasts; the amazing story of the first enduring example of a Federation of Nations in the Polish-Lithuanian Union; the ensuing power of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Poland under the Jugiellonian kings; the experiment of the Royal Republic; the deluge of wars; and, at the close of the eighteenth century, the political collapse.

Also included is the story of Poland’s rebirth after World War I, her twenty-one years of independence, and her contribution to the Allied cause in World War II.