John Radzilowski

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. Yet no one has told the full story of our state's large and varied Polish community—until now. 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. Authors John Radzilowski and Ann Hetzel Gunkel look at family life among Polish immigrants, their role in the economic development of the state, the working conditions they experienced, and the development of their labor activism. Close-knit Polish American communities were often centered on parish churches but also focused on fraternal and social groups and cultural organizations. Polish Americans, including waves of political refugees during World War II and the Cold War, helped shape the history and culture of not only Chicago, the 'capital' of Polish America, but also the rest of Illinois with their music, theater, literature, food. With forty-seven photographs and an ample number of extensive excerpts from first-person accounts and Polish newspaper articles, this captivating, highly readable book illustrates important and often overlooked stories of this ethnic group in Illinois and the changing nature of Polish ethnicity in the state over the past two hundred years. Illinoisans and Midwesterners celebrating their connections to Poland will treasure this rich and important part of the state's history.

Thoroughly revised and expanded, this is the definitive reference on American immigration from both historic and contemporary perspectives. It traces the scope and sweep of U. S. immigration from the earliest settlements to the present, providing a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to all aspects of this critically important subject. Every major immigrant group and every era in U. S. history are fully documented and examined through detailed analysis of social, legal, political, economic, and demographic factors. Hot-topic issues and controversies - from Amnesty to the U. S.-Mexican Border - are covered in-depth. Archival and contemporary photographs and illustrations further illuminate the information provided. And dozens of charts and tables provide valuable statistics and comparative data, both historic and current. A special feature of this edition is the inclusion of more than 80 full-text primary documents from 1787 to 2013 - laws and treaties, referenda, Supreme Court cases, historical articles, and letters.

Polish Americans have been part of Minnesota history since before the states 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. In this highly readable volume, author John Radzilowski tells the story of the Polish Americans, many of them political refugees, who created and sustained community institutions across Minnesota. He describes how they developed a significant literary tradition, published newspapers, and built distinctive churches that still adorn the landscape, and he traces the careers of individuals who immigrated with little and built businesses and new lives. This deft overview, filled with intriguing details, shows how Polish Americans established their own cultural identity within the state.

The Polish Roman Catholic Union of America (PRCUA) is the oldest Polish organization in the United States. At a time when many Polish Americans were disenchanted with the Irish-dominated American Catholic hierarchy, the PRCUA was a bastion of loyalty to the Church and was America's largest Polish-Catholic loyalist organization. Drawing on a tradition of Catholic positivism, the PRCUA dedicated itself to work on behalf of impoverished immigrants, caring for their physical, moral, educational, and social needs within the framework of the local parish-community. The Eagle and the Cross is the first comprehensive, English-language history of this important and often overlooked fraternal organization. Lavishly illustrated, the book tells the story of the men and women, laity and clergy, who built and sustained the PRCUA from 1873 to today. It restores this key organization to its rightful place in the history of Polish Americans and reaffirms the central role of Catholicism in the history and culture of this important ethnic group.