Dunham and Young's Contracts, Specifications, and Law for Engineers Book

Norman Davies is an outstanding historian who is one of the world's leading experts in Polish history, and the book demonstrates this. It contains a wealth of detail that paints the daily life in historic times, but also analyses long-term developments within the Polish nation as well as in international politics, of which Poland has so often and so dramatically been the victim. This is simply the best and most comprehensive book on Polish history written by a non-Pole.

There were however also a few things I did not like about the book. The first is that Davies tends often to assume that you are already familiar with the main events. When he introduces a subject he will often already then link it up with future events, like certain risings or battles, that at that point will not have been discussed. He can also get quite academic in some parts and bother you with lots of details and academic considerations that do not really push the historic narrative forward. This makes in my opinion the book at some points a bit tedious for the enthusiastic amateur historian who is new to Polish history.