Reviews of Books

At the crossroads

Saturday 15 November 2003 The Guardian, Angus McQueen
Rising '44

Ever since his remarkable history of Poland, God's Playground, Davies has been widely recognised as the historian of that benighted country. Now he has used the forthcoming 60th anniversary of the uprising not only to provide a comprehensive account but to make us rethink the central trauma of the 20th century - the conflict between democracies and the totalitarian fantasies of fascism and communism. Davies places the rising firmly at the crossroads between the defeat of Hitler and the beginning of the cold war. 

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Solving the Polish conundrum

Saturday 01 November 2003 Spectator Book Club, Adam Zamoyski

The Warsaw uprising of August 1944 was one of the most tragic episodes of the second world war, resulting in the destruction of the city and some 200,000 of its inhabitants. It is also one of the least well known.

The "First Ally" under siege

Monday 05 April 2004 The New Leader, Richard C. Hottelet

The romantic freedom of expression that has marked Poland’s history inspires British historician Norman Davies’s telling of the suffering its people endured during a heroic struggle against hopeless odds in the World War II. "Rising ’44" describes the efforts, 60 years ago this summer, of the Polish underground Home Army to wrest the capital city from German occupation. The book is a labor of love and an elegy for their tragic sacrifices.