When Here was published in Poland, reviewers marveled, “How is it that she keeps getting better?” These twenty-seven poems, as rendered by prize-winning translators Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak, are among her greatest work. Whether writing about her teenage self, microscopic creatures, or the upsides to living on Earth, she remains a virtuoso of form, line, and thought. From the title poem: I can’t speak for elsewhere, but here on Earth we’ve got a fair supply of everything. Here we manufacture chairs and sorrows, scissors, tenderness, transistors, violins, teacups, dams, and quips . . . Like nowhere else, or almost nowhere, you’re given your own torso here, equipped with the accessories required for adding your own children to the rest. Not to mention arms, legs, and astonished head.

    Fleeing his homeland after a death sentence was placed on his head (when he dared court a woman above his station), he came to America one month after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, literally showing up on Benjamin Franklin’s doorstep in Philadelphia with little more than a revolutionary spirit and a genius for engineering. Entering the fray as a volunteer in the war effort, he quickly proved his capabilities and became the most talented engineer of the Continental Army. Kosciuszko went on to construct the fortifications for Philadelphia, devise battle plans that were integral to the American victory at the pivotal Battle of Saratoga, and designed the plans for Fortress West Point—the same plans that were stolen by Benedict Arnold. Then, seeking new challenges, Kosciuszko asked for a transfer to the Southern Army, where he oversaw a ring of African-American spies.A lifelong champion of the common man and woman, he was ahead of his time in advocating tolerance and standing up for the rights of slaves, Native Americans, women, serfs, and Jews. Following the end of the war, Kosciuszko returned to Poland and was a leading figure in that nation’s Constitutional movement. He became Commander in Chief of the Polish Army and valiantly led a defense against a Russian invasion, and in 1794 he led what was dubbed the Kosciuszko Uprising—a revolt of Polish-Lithuanian forces against the Russian occupiers. Captured during the revolt, he was ultimately pardoned by Russia’s Paul I and lived the remainder of his life as an international celebrity and a vocal proponent for human rights. Thomas Jefferson, with whom Kosciuszko had an ongoing correspondence on the immorality of slaveholding, called him “as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known.” A lifelong bachelor with a knack for getting involved in doomed relationships, Kosciuszko navigated the tricky worlds of royal intrigue and romance while staying true to his ultimate passion—the pursuit of freedom for all. This definitive and exhaustively researched biography fills a long-standing gap in historical literature with its account of a dashing and inspiring revolutionary figure.

    Few writers in poetry or prose have attained the lucid intelligence and limpid economy of style that are the trademarks of his work. His wry humor, gentle skepticism, and perpetual sense of history's dark possibilities have earned him a devoted international following. This collection, gracefully translated by Clare Cavanagh, finds the poet returning to the themes that have defined his career—moving meditations on place, language, and history. Unseen Hand is a luminous meeting of art and everyday life.

    Michael Czyzniejewski’s writing is both poignant and playful. The collection includes fl ash and longer fiction and is the antithesis of those collections complained about for having every story too similar to each other.Michael Czyzniejewski was born in Chicago and grew up in its south suburbs. He earned his MFA at Bowling Green State University and now teaches there while editing the Mid-American Review. Since turning twenty-one, he has also worked at Wrigley Field, selling beer in the aisles. He lives in Bowling Green with his wife and son.

    The story of millions of young men and women who gave everything for freedom and in the final victory lost all. In a cruel twist of history the monumental struggles of an entire nation have been forgotten, and even intentionally obscured. This book redresses the balance, giving a comprehensive overview of Poland's participation in World War II. Following their valiant but doomed defense of Poland in 1939, members of the Polish armed forces fought with the Allies wherever and however they could. With previously unpublished first-hand accounts, information never before seen in English, and rare photographs, this title provides a detailed analysis of the devastation the war brought to Poland, and the final betrayal when, having fought for freedom for six long years, Poland was handed to the Soviet Union.

    Accessible and absorbing, the essays in Is God Happy? deal with some of the eternal problems of philosophy and the most vital questions of our age.Leszek Kolakowski has also written on religion, Spinoza, Bergson, Pascal and seventeenth-century thought. He left communist Poland after his expulsion from Warsaw University for anti-communist activities. From 1970 he was a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.'His distinctive mix of irony and moral seriousness, religious sensibility and epistemological scepticism, social engagement and political doubt was truly rare ... a true Central European intellectual-perhaps the last' Tony Judt, The New York Times Review of Books

    It is a testament to the strength of the human spirit and to a generation that did not see itself as 'victims, ' but as 'survivors.' Studies of the War and post-War years have traditionally focused on political and military history. In recent years there has been a greater interest in the social consequences of the War. Nevertheless, discussions relating to the displacement of the Polish-born usually focus on the Holocaust interpreted as a Jewish-only phenomenon. Yet, in the years 1939-45, Poland lost 6,029,000, or 22%, of its total population, including approximately 3 million of its Christian residents. Many of those who survived the War, at its conclusion, were scattered all over the world; by the end of 1945, 249,000 members of the Polish Armed Forces were under British command, with 41,400 dependants in the United Kingdom, Italy, East and South Africa, New Zealand, India, Palestine, Mexico and Western Germany. These refugees have long sought a voice for their experiences. The website, www.PolishDiaspora.net, was created in 2006 by Dr. Wojciechowska as a forum for their voices. The international deluge of interest in the project resulted in Waiting to be Heard. While some participants had talked and written about their experiences before, the majority had not discussed their experiences with anyone outside their immediate social circle. And the memories are still painful, as exemplified by one participant who said, "God, I askyou; allow me to forget those days and weeks when I lay on piles of corpses in the hope of finding a tiny bit of warmth; allow me to forget the licking of ice from the walls of the cattle wagons; allow me to lose my memory of those years!"

    Conversely, memory divergence resulting from national mythmaking harms long-term prospects for reconciliation. After WWII, Sino-Japanese and West German-Polish relations were both antagonized by the Cold War structure, and pernicious myths prevailed in national collective memory. In the 1970s, China and Japan brushed aside historical legacy for immediate diplomatic normalization. But the progress of reconciliation was soon impeded from the 1980s by elite mythmaking practices that stressed historical animosities. In contrast, from the 1970s West Germany and Poland began to de-mythify war history and narrowed their memory gap through restitution measures and textbook cooperation, paving the way for significant progress toward reconciliation after the Cold War.

    Resulting from 10 years of research and visits to Indian lands, the book was inspired by the writer s great uncle Korczak Ziolkowski , sculptor of the Crazy Horse mountain carving in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The author provides a broad spectrum of Indian history, culture, traditions, subjugation, suffering, reservation poverty, failed government policies, education, emergence and the portent of a future of well-deserved dignity, respect and beginning signs of success. Personal interviews with members of the Apache, Chickasaw, Kiowa and Northern Cheyenne Nations add a potent insight into Indian feelings and opinions. Clearly evident throughout the book is Ziolkowska-Boehm s admiration and esteem for American Indians, particularly for the pride they exhibit after suffering a heritage of open wounds over many years.