![]() ![]() ![]() Snyder uses the biography of Józewski to illustrate the momentous turning points in Poland regarding the role of state in society, and competing definitions of nation, nationalism, and modernism. This micro view, placed always within its larger historical and philosophical context, makes for an enticing read. His narrative lands on one man, Henryk Józewski, an artist, intellectual, governor of Polish Volhynia from 1926–1938, and subsequently a secret agent in the Polish underground until his imprisonment in 1953. In his new book, Snyder's gaze plunges earthward to the quiet terrain of Polish Volhynia in the eastern borderlands in the tumultuous interwar years. The narrative of Timothy Snyder's previous book, Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Luthuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 (2003), scans the Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian borderlands giving a bird's-eye view of centuries of history. ![]()
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