Jerzy Lukowski is Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Birmingham, UK. His most recent books are The European Nobility in the eighteenth century (2003) and Disorderly Liberty: the political culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the eighteenth century (2010). Hubert Zawadzki is an independent scholar and member of Wolfson College at the University of Oxford. He is the author of A Man of Honour: Adam Czartoryski as Statesman of Russia and Poland 1795-1831 (1993), and editor and translator of Irena Protassewicz's A Polish Woman's Experience in World War II (forthcoming). He has given talks on BBC radio and has appeared on BBC TV programmes involving Poland. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

• List of illustrations and maps; Preface to the third edition; Preface to the second edition; Preface to the first edition; A note on Polish pronunciation; Chronology; Part I. Poland, to 1795: 1. Piast Poland, ?–1385; 2. Jagiellonian Poland, 1386–1572; 3. The Commonwealth of the two Nations, 1572–1795; Part II. Poland, after 1795: 4. Challenging the partitions, 1795–1864; 5. An era of transformation, 1864–1914; 6. Independence regained and lost, 1914–45; 7. Communism and the Cold War, 1945–89; 8. A new republic, 1989–; Geneaological charts of Polish rulers; List of heads of state, presidents, Communist Party leaders (1918–2018); Bibliography; Index.

'… lucid, insightful, and often witty and pithy … the authors are especially good in their dispassionate treatment of sensitive political and social issues and challenges, particularly those that have dominated recent decades. These matters include Poland's place in Europe, the role of the Catholic Church, xenophobic and anti-Semitic traditions, and 'the lack of confidence in many of the state's institutions and in the rule of law, coupled with the low quality of much political debate' (as the authors write in the final chapter). Illustrations (two new ones in this edition), maps, ruler lists, and a good English-language bibliography enhance the volume. Recommended.' P. W. Knoll, Choice