It is no coincidence that the cover of this book features Warsaw, a city caught between East and West, different cultures and languages, ‘globalized’ for centuries, voluntarily and forcibly, by Poles and Jews, Russians and Germans. At least until the early 1990s, I associated this city, where my family has lived for five generations, not so much with globalization as with isolation and backwardness. This book, pioneering and surprising, allows me to verify this view and look at Eastern Europe from a different, non-stereotypical side. It shows how diverse, innovative, and at the same time hardly noticed and appreciated the region's contribution to the global sphere of ideas, science or culture is. It demonstrates the need to look holistically, broadly, and deeply, and it teaches but also warns—a must-read for these difficult times.