Bolesław Prus and the Jews shows the complexity of the so-called “Jewish question” in nineteenth-century Congress Poland and especially its significance in Prus’ social concept, reflected in his extensive body of journalistic work, fiction, and treatises. The book traces Prus’ evolving worldview toward Jews, from his support of the Assimilation Program in his early years to his eventual support of Zionism. These contrasting ideas show us the complexity of the discourse on Jewish issues from the individual perspective of a significant writer of the time, as well as the dynamics of the Jewish modernization process in a “non-existent” partitioned Poland. The portrait of Prus that emerges is surprisingly ambivalent.

A vibrant Jewish community flourished in Poland from late in the tenth century until it was virtually annihilated in World War II. In this remarkable anthology, the first of its kind, Harold B. Segel offers translations of poems and prose works—mainly fiction—by non-Jewish Polish writers. Taken together, the selections represent the complex perceptions about Jews in the Polish community in the period 1530-1990.

In this multidisciplinary volume, leading historians provide new understanding of a time that sent shockwaves through Jewish communities in and beyond the Russian Empire and transformed the way Jews thought about the politics of ethnic and national identity.

First published in 1896, 'Pharaoh' is considered one of the great novels of Polish literature. The account of Rames XIII (who never existed) set in Egypt of eleven centuries before Christ, 'Pharaoh' is the timeless and universal story of the struggle for power, no less true for 19th century Poland and today.

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume project, authored by an international team of researchers, and offering the first-ever synthetic overview of the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe. Covering twenty national cultures and languages, the ensuing work goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narrative and offers a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural entanglement of discourses. Devising a regional perspective, the authors avoid projecting the Western European analytical and conceptual schemes on the whole continent, and develop instead new concepts, patterns of periodization and interpretative models. At the same time, they also reject the self-enclosing Eastern or Central European regionalist narratives and instead emphasize the multifarious dialogue of the region with the rest of the world. Along these lines, the two volumes are intended to make these cultures available for the global 'market of ideas' and also help rethinking some of the basic assumptions about the history of modern political thought, and modernity as such. The first volume deals with the period ranging from the Late Enlightenment to the First World War. It is structured along four broader chronological and thematic units: Enlightenment reformism, Romanticism and the national revivals, late nineteenth-century institutionalization of the national and state-building projects, and the new ideologies of the fin-de-siècle facing the rise of mass politics. Along these lines, the authors trace the continuities and ruptures of political discourses. They focus especially on the ways East Central European political thinkers sought to bridge the gap between the idealized Western type of modernity and their own societies challenged by overlapping national projects, social and cultural fragmentation, and the lack of institutional continuity.

Key themes and issues relevant to writing the social history of the Jews in the modern period are brought to the fore here in a way that is accessible both to professional historians and to educated readers with an interest in Jewish history. Some of the articles are programmatic and argumentative, others are case studies. Together they create a strong, coherent volume that demonstrates the advantages of the social historical perspective as a tool for interpreting the Jewish world.

Zimmerman examines the attitude and behavior of the Polish Underground towards the Jews during the Holocaust.