The range of books reviewed in this issue is exceptionally broad. The first two reviews deal with perhaps the finest short-story teller in America, Anthony Bukoski; the third review speaks about Polish communities in Texas in the nineteenth century. A balanced survey of the monumental work on Rising ’44 follows-no, it is not Norman Davies’s book, but a huge volume of documents published jointly by Polish and Russian researchers. Next, a review of a book by the notorious Patrick Buchanan whose ignorance-laced prejudice against Polish Catholics is matched only by his accommodating attitudes toward Russian postcommunists. In his largely negative portrait of Winston Churchill Buchanan leaves out Churchill’s deplorable duplicity toward the Poles. Indeed, as the reviewer says, Churchill played a major role in handing over nearly half of Europe to the Soviets. Lewis Siegelbaum’s book reminds us of the provenance of present-day postcommunists, while the reviewer of his book aptly notes that the book erroneously implies that the USSR was inhabited exclusively by Russians. Finally, an exceptionally fine review of the poetry of Kapuściński (yes, Ryszard Kapuściński) and Julia Hartwig. On the final pages of the issue we present translated poetry by two very different poets, Adam Mickiewicz and Jerzy Harasymowicz. What separates them is a century and a half under foreign occupation: back to our lead article.