Bibliofreakblog

Poland by James Michener

In European History and Western Civilization classes, at least in the U.S., you pretty much study England, France, a little bit of Germany, some Italy, possibly some Russia, and maybe a bit of the Spanish and Vikings.  I’m half Polish (on my Mom’s side), and have always been annoyed with this.  So it was with great relish that I read Michener’s epic, Poland.

However, it was not the same as some of Michener’s other works.  Probably because it started out in the 13th century and went up to the 1980’s (when it was written), there was less in depth character development.  A lot of it focused (quite factually) on battles.  

But that was not necessarily a detriment.  Because really, it’s the same story is told over and over, with the same set of characters.

Michener uses the fictional town of Bukowo, on the Vistual river not too far from Krakow as the setting for the whole novel.  There’s Jan, or Janko Buk, the peasant; the Bukowski family, who are what Michener describes as petty gentry, and the Count Lubonski’s family, who are powerful.

And every story pretty much goes like this: Raiders come and completely fuck everything up.  In the first story, it’s the tatars, then later the Teutonic Knights, the Swedes, the Ottomans, the Austrians, Prussians, and Russians, and then the Nazis, and finally the Russian Communists.  The first few rape and pillage and burn, the last few groups terrorize and systematically destroy.  

Lubonski calls on Bukowski who calls on Buk to fight the invaders.  They almost always win.  Bukowski and Lubonski get richer, and Buk stays ungodly poor.  Because he is a serf, Buk must first rebuild the castles of Bukowski and Lubonski, and then receives no help rebuilding is own home.  Literally the nobles own the serfs, who get to eat meat maybe once a year if they are lucky.

But they key is that they do rebuild.  The nobles aren’t always wise, but they’re tough.  The serfs have to work six days a week, from sun up to sun down, and give over most of what they cultivate, but they get by.

Basically, Poland survives.  And in doing so, they often prevent waves of invaders from reaching other parts of Europe.

The end is horribly sad (well, let’s face it, many stories in this book pretty much end with, “and then they died” so it’s all very sad), but that’s only because Michener wrote the book about ten years too soon.  My husband read it a couple weeks before I did, and when he finished, he threw it across the room and started yelling about how it doesn’t end that way, and the last chapter of the book is missing.  Michener died in ‘97, and I really wish he had added and afterword before his death, but in the mean time there is always Wikipedia and your imagination.
Buy Poland on Amazon

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
World Without End by Ken Follett
A Concise History of Poland by Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki
The Polish Way: A Thousand-Year History of the Poles and Their Culture by Adam Zamoyski
Maus by Art Spiegelman
The Apple by Penelope Holt
Against a Crimson Sky by James Conrody Martin
Push Not the River by James Conroyd Martin
The Last Mazurka: A Family’s Tale of War, Passion, and Loss by Andrew Tarnowski
Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation 1939-1944 by Richard C Lukas
The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution by Alex Storoszynski
With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz
The Deluge by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Streets of Warsaw: A Novel of the Polish Resistance in World War II by Steven Lee Wiggins
Russka: The Novel of Russia by Edward Rutherford

Other works by James Michener*:

The Source
Centennial
Caravans
Return to Paradise
The Fires of Spring
The Bridges at Toko-Ri
Chesapeake
Drifters
The Voice of Asia
Tales of the South Pacific
The Covenant
Sayonara
Hawaii
Iberia 
Floating World
Bridge at Andau
Caribbean
The World Is My Home: A Memoir
Alaska
Rascals in Paradise
Recessional
Matecumbe
Texas
Mexico 
Legacy
Journey

*Note: This is not an exhaustive list.  For the most part it only includes works still in print, though you can still find many of his other works used. 

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