This question repeatedly appears in each learner's mind. If you want to master a new language, you need to operate within its key components-reading, listening, vocabulary, grammar, writing, and speaking.

Lying at the crucible of Central Europe, the Silesian village of Kupferberg suffered the violence of the Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, the World War I. After Stalin's post-World War II redrawing of Poland's borders, Kupferberg became Miedzianka, a town settled by displaced people from all over Poland and a new center of the Eastern Bloc's uranium-mining industry. Decades of neglect and environmental degradation led to the town being declared uninhabitable, and the population was evacuated. Today, it exists only in ruins, with barely a hundred people living on the unstable ground above its collapsing mines. Springer catalogs the lost human elements: the long-departed tailor and deceased shopkeeper; the parties, now silenced, that used to fill the streets with shouts and laughter, and the once-beautiful cemetery, with gravestones upended by tractors and human bones scattered by dogs. In Miedzianka, Springer sees a microcosm of European history, and a powerful narrative of how the ghosts of the past continue to haunt us in the present--Provided by the publisher.

The ultimate quick and easy guide to learning Polish Polish can be a difficult language to master. It is pronounced phonetically and has several unique characters in its alphabet, but with Polish For Dummies in hand, you'll find yourself speaking like a local in no time. Packed with practical lessons, handy cultural facts, and essential references (including a Polish-English mini-dictionary and lists of common verbs), this guide is specially designed to get you speaking Polish with confidence. With advice on speaking Polish within the construction, teaching, and public sector industries, this book is a truly practical tool for anyone wanting to speak the language either professionally or socially. Includes sections dedicated to Polish in action, Polish on the go, and Polish in the workplace A companion audio CD contains Polish conversations spoken by native Polish speakers in a variety of everyday contexts, perfect for learning Polish on the go A Polish-English dictionary is included to provide quick access to the most common words With easy-to-follow instruction and exercises that give you the language to communicate during day-to-day experiences, readers of Polish For Dummies will learn the words and verbal constructions they need to communicate with friends and colleagues at home, find directions on holiday, and more. Note - CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of the e-book file, but are available for download after purchase.

Are you sick and tired of not being able to learn Polish fast? Have you tried endless other ways of learning Polish but nothing seems to stick? Do you finally want to say goodbye to your tendency to 'forget most of what you've studied' and discover something which works for you? If so, then you've come to the right place.

Witty, surprising and sparkling, this anthology is an essential exploration of Polish literature. Its thirty-nine superb stories run the length of the literal and imaginative creation of Poland, from 1918 (when Poland regained its independence after 123 years of colonization by the neighbouring empires) to the present. The stories include 'Miss Winczewska', by the classic twentieth-century writer Maria Dabrowska (1889—1965), based on her experience of returning from the provinces to the destroyed capital when the war ended in 1945; and 'In the Shadow of Brooklyn' by Stanislaw Dygat (1914—1978), the comical tale of a young man's envy of what he imagines to be his father's success with women. At the contemporary end, it includes a story by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk (1962), 'The Green Children', a historical story set in 1656, narrated by a Scottish doctor who, as the Polish king's physician, travels about the wilds of Poland and encounters two feral children. Curated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, this anthology is a refreshing and glorious new collection of the best in Polish literature.

Fighting Warsaw is a human story. Stefan Korbonski, the leader of the Polish Underground State, portrays the years of the German occupation during the Second World War and the beginning of anti-Soviet underground activities thereafter. His story presents the entire organization, strategy, and tactics of the Polish underground, which included armed resistance, civil disobedience, sabotage, and boycotts. “...The Polish Underground was perhaps the best organized and most active of all wartime undergrounds; and Stefan Korbonski is well qualified to tell its story....He was, almost immediately after the fighting had stopped, arrested by the Russians...he managed to regain his freedom, and it is to this happy release that we owe this book, an absorbing account of Poland’s fight for freedom These are the highly personal memoirs of an active conspirator and, in their vivid detail and exciting anecdotes, they are probably more successful in conveying a sense of what the resistance was actually like than a more comprehensive treatment would be...Few people who read the author’s chapters on this one aspect of the resistance will fail to be moved by them or to come away from them with an increased understanding of the prerequisites of successful opposition to an occupying power that is both efficient and ruthless.”—GORDON CRAIG, New York Herald Tribune “...Fighting Warsaw...is one of the most absorbing, inspiring and ultimately disheartening documents to come out of the last war....The book, which is detailed and written with humor, modesty, and a surprising lack of rancor, makes it quite plain that there is an indomitable quality in the Poles that will prevent them from ever giving up their great dream....”—The New Yorker