Bøger af John Radzilowski

Polish Americans have been part of Minnesota history since before the state's founding. Taking up farms along newly laid rail networks, Polish immigrants fanned across the countryside in small but important concentrations. In cities like Winona and St. Paul, Northeast Minneapolis and Duluth, as well as on the Iron Range, Polish American workers helped drive a growing industrial and agricultural economy--and established their own cultural identity within the state. Polish Americans, many of them political refugees created and sustained a wide range of community institutions from churches and schools to cultural groups and social clubs in Minnesota. They developed a significant literary tradition, published newspapers, and adorned the landscape with their distinctive churches. Author John Radzilowski tells the stories of individuals like Stan Wasie, a Polish immigrant boy who grew up to become a pioneer in the trucking industry, founding Merchants Motor Freight in Northeast Minneapolis in 1927. By the 1950s the successful company had 800 vehicles and its own terminals.

Poland is a major European country with nearly 40 million inhabitants and a land area comparable to Spain. It has played a major role in European history but its subjugation by foreign powers in the nineteenth century and during the Cold War eclipsed Poland in the minds of many in Western Europe and the United States. Throughout its long and diverse history it has been a meeting place of many cultures and has given the world the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz, the music of Chopin, and the scientific discoveries of Copernicus and Marie Curie, to name but a few. In A Traveller’s History of Poland, John Radzilowski vividly describes the beginnings of the country, first fragmented then reborn to overcome the aggression of the Teutonic Knights and its greedy neighbors. Poland enjoyed a Golden Age in the fifteen and sixteenth centuries but a gradual decline then led to Poland losing its autonomy despite winning many battles with its army’s legendary military skill and gallantry. Yet the spirit of the country and its people lived on. Since the horrors of the Second World War and Soviet control, Poland has gradually regained its rightful place in Europe, joining NATO in 1989 and in May 2004, the EU. It is playing a new role on the European and international stage. This makes now an ideal time to introduce students and travellers to Poland and its complex history. The book includes a full chronology, a list of monarchs and rulers, a gazetteer, historical maps and is fully illustrated.

Illinois boasts one of the most visible concentrations of Poles in the United States. Chicago is home to one of the largest Polish ethnic communities outside Poland itself. Poles in Illinois is the first comprehensive history to trace the abundance and diversity of this ethnic group throughout the state from the 1800s to the present.

Lavishly illustrated, the book tells the story of the men and women, laity and clergy, who built and sustained the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America from 1873 to today.