Polish Books

The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom

Slavomir Rawicz

List Price: $14.95 By: The Lyons Press Amazon Marketplace: 83 new & used starting at $2.18

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> General AAS
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Military -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 297 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A real page turner 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The long walk is one hell of an adventure. It is well written and is difficult to put down once you start to read it. I am sceptical whether it is true. Walking across the Kobi desert with no food or water is a bit difficult to believe. I think a bit more research needs to be done to vouch for the veracity of this story. Whether the book is fact or fiction it is still a very interesting story to read.

A Mythic Tale 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The Long Walk is one of the greatest books I have ever read. The decades long battle over its authenticity is, I think, a testament to its power. Only a work of literature that brings such palpable reality to the reader could have withstood the firestorm of controversy surrounding it from so many corners.

Concerning its authenticity, I think there should be some humility shown on all sides. There are those who would desire to believe it simply because it is a great tale. Others would seek to "burst the bubble" of all involved out of a cynical doubt in the human capacity for greatness.

Several considerations should be made when considering the recently revealed documents disproving Rawicz's claims: 1. Rawicz' story is too detailed to have been entirely fabricated. Whether or not he himself participated in the events he describes is doubtful, but that the events themselves or something like them occurred is, in my mind, undeniable; 2. Placing a great deal of trust in Soviet documents from the Stalin era has never been a wise course to take. The fact that Rawicz, according to these documents, rejoined the Polish Army the day after he was released from the Gulag (remarkable considering the debilitating conditions he obviously suffered from in later life due to his imprisonment), make it seem a little too clean.

The most likely occurrence, in my own mind, is that Rawicz appropriated the story from a group of survivors who underwent a journey similar to the one he describes. The BBC article makes this clear:

"A clue may come from the story of Rupert Mayne, a British intelligence officer in wartime India. In Calcutta in 1942, he interviewed three emaciated men, who claimed to have escaped from Siberia.

Mayne always believed their story was the same as that of The Long Walk - but telling the story years later, he could not remember their names. So the possibility remains that someone - if not Rawicz - achieved this extraordinary feat."

Whatever the case, the story Rawicz communicates possesses a majesty and power that can only belong to the annals of Truth.

Editorial Review:

The harrowing true tale of escaped Soviet prisoners¿ desperate march out of Siberia, through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India.

In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer

Irene Opdyke

List Price: $25.95 By: Listening Library Amazon Marketplace: 7 new & used starting at $18.63

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Ethnic & National -> Jewish
Subjects -> Children's Books -> History & Historical Fiction -> Holocaust
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Biographies -> Historical

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 81 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Read by Hope Davis
7 hours 6 minutes, 4 cassettes

"You must understand that I did not become a resistance fighter, a smuggler of Jews, a defier of the SS and the Nazis all at once. One's first steps are always small: I had begun by hiding food under a fence."

Through this intimate and compelling memoir, we are witness to the growth of a hero. Irene Gut was just a girl when the war began: seventeen, a Polish patriot, a student nurse, a good Catholic girl. As the war progressed, the soldiers of two countries stripped her of all she loved—her family, her home, her innocence—but the degradations only strengthened her will.

She began to fight back. Irene was forced to work for the German army, but her blond hair, her blue eyes, and her youth bought her the relatively safe job of waitress in an officer's dining room. She would use this Aryan mask as both a shield and a sword: She picked up snatches of conversation along with the Nazis' dirty dishes and passed the information to Jews in the ghetto. She raided the German Warenhaus for food and blankets. She smuggled people fron the work camp into the forest. And, when she was made the housekeeper of a Nazi major, she successfully hid twelve Jews in the basement of his home until the Germans' defeat.

This young woman was determined to deliver her friends from evil. It was as simple and as impossible as that.

Word by Word Picture Dictionary English/Polish Edition (2nd Edition) (Prentice-Hall Series in Automatic Computation)

Bill Bliss, Steven J. Molinsky

Amazon Price: $24.00 List Price: $24.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Pearson ESL Amazon Marketplace: 16 new & used starting at $21.41

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Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Management Science
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> General AAS
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Word by Word Picture Dictionary, Second Edition, by Steven J. Molinsky and Bill Bliss, is the only truly communicative vocabulary development program! This is the new edition of the picture dictionary program famous worldwide for its ease-of-use, lively spirit, and active conversational approach. Outstanding features of the new edition: *The English/Polish Edition and otherBilingual Editions present the second language in blue next to each English word. *Vibrant illustrations and simple accessible lesson pages are designed for clarity and ease-of-use with learners at all levels. Word by Word is the most learner-friendly picture dictionary -- especially for Beginners.*More than 4,000 words in an expanded range of topics prepare students for success using English in everyday life, in the community, in school, and at work.*A careful research-based sequence of lessons integrates students' development of grammar and vocabulary skills through topics that begin with the immediate world of the student and progress to the world at large.*New lesson formats provide integrated context-based instruction with nouns and high-frequency verbs.Objects and actions that go together are learned together! *Expanded discussion questions encourage students to share their backgrounds, experiences, opinions, and creativity as they relate vocabulary and themes to their own lives.*A new Teacher's Guide and Lesson Planner with CD-ROM in a colorful user-friendly format includes lesson planning suggestions, community tasks, weblinks for expanding vocabulary themes through the Internet, and reproducible masters to save teachers hours of lesson preparation time.*A unique choice of workbooks at Beginning and Intermediate levels offers flexible options to meet students' needs: *Vocabulary Workbooks feature motivating vocabulary, grammar, and listening practice.*Standards-based Lifeskills Workbooks provide competency-based activities and reading tied to national, state, and local curriculum frameworks. *A Literacy Workbook is also available.*The outstanding audio program includes all words and conversations for interactive practice, and -- as bonus material -- an expanded program of WordSongs for entertaining musical practice with the vocabulary.

301 Polish Verbs (Barron's)

Klara Janecki

Amazon Price: $11.55 List Price: $16.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Barron's Educational Series Amazon Marketplace: 46 new & used starting at $8.00

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Subjects -> Reference -> Dictionaries & Thesauruses -> Foreign Language -> Polish
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Useful resource, excellent improvement over previous edition 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I bought 301 Polish Verbs to supplement an intensive beginning Polish course, and I am very pleased with this book. The verb charts are quite helpful, and I transferred many of them to flashcards to help me study.
The crucial difference between 301 Polish Verbs and its predecessor, 201 Polish Verbs, is that (in addition to the extra 100 verbs) 301 Polish Verbs includes a long introduction that includes solid yet brief explanations of the grammar not only of verbs but also of the different cases that the verbs take.
The verbs are grouped into verb groups that are all listed under the same single heading verb. The perfective and imperfective form of the verb, as well as other related verbs with the same verb "root", are all listed on a single page. This grouping is helpful for learning that all these verbs are related and their tenses work the same way. However, the groupings can make it difficult to look up a particular Polish verb, as the verbs are listed alphabetically by the heading verb, and one must check multiple indexes to find out which heading verb it is listed under.
The example sentences at the bottom of each page are very helpful to illustrate the usage of the different verbs in context and to "see" how the verbs take different objects in different cases. However, I would have liked there to be more example sentences--some verbs (though not "heading" verbs) do not even have a single example sentence.

Editorial Review:

The most commonly used Polish verbs are listed alphabetically, one verb per page, and fully conjugated with English translation in a table format. Other helpful features for both language students and travelers include English- Polish and Polish-English verb indexes listing nearly 2300 verbs, and common Polish idioms using verbs. The book also features puzzles, Polish proverbs, self-tests, and other aids designed to improve students' familiarity with and usage of Polish verbs. Here is a fine supplement to language class textbooks, and a useful aid for travelers in Poland.

Basic Polish: Learn to Speak and Understand Polish with Pimsleur Language Programs (Simon & Schuster's Pimsleur)

Pimsleur

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Pimsleur Amazon Marketplace: 32 new & used starting at $14.40

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Subjects -> Reference -> Foreign Languages -> Instruction -> Polish
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This Basic program contains 5 hours of audio-only, effective language learning with real-life spoken practice sessions.

HEAR IT, LEARN IT, SPEAK IT®

What is the Pimsleur® difference?

The Pimsleur Method provides the most effective language-learning program ever developed. The Pimsleur Method gives you quick command of Polish structure without tedious drills. Learning to speak Polish can actually be enjoyable and rewarding.

The key reason most people struggle with new languages is that they aren't given proper instruction, only bits and pieces of a language. Other language programs sell only pieces -- dictionaries; grammar books and instructions; lists of hundreds or thousands of words and definitions; audios containing useless drills. They leave it to you to assemble these pieces as you try to speak. Pimsleur enables you to spend your time learning to speak the language rather than just studying its parts.

When you were learning English, could you speak before you knew how to conjugate verbs? Of course you could. That same learning process is what Pimsleur replicates. Pimsleur presents the whole language as one integrated piece so you can succeed.

With Pimsleur you get:

• Grammar and vocabulary taught together in everyday conversation,
• Interactive audio-only instruction that teaches spoken language organically,
• The flexibility to learn anytime, anywhere,
• 30-minute lessons designed to optimize the amount of language you can learn in one sitting.

Millions of people have used Pimsleur to gain real conversational skills in new languages quickly and easily, wherever and whenever -- without textbooks, written exercises, or drills.

The 10 lessons in the Basic Polish are the same as the first 10 lessons in the Pimsleur Comprehensive Polish Level 1.

The 10 lessons in Basic Polish are also the first 10 lessons in the 16-lesson Conversational Polish edition.

Pimsleur learners progress from either the Basic or the Conversational to the Comprehensive Level 1, and not from Basic to Conversational edition.

Hippocrene Beginner's Polish (Book & 2 Audio CDs)

Ewa Wanasz Bialasiewicz

Amazon Price: $14.93 List Price: $21.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Hippocrene Books Amazon Marketplace: 21 new & used starting at $2.98

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Subjects -> Reference -> Foreign Languages -> Instruction -> Polish
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Subjects -> Reference -> Foreign Languages -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Hippocrene Beginner’s Series offers basic language instruction, presenting grammar, vocabulary, and common phrases in clear, concise lessons. Review questions and exercises accompany each section, while historical and cultural material gives insight into customs and everyday situations. Books in the series are an ideal companion for students, travelers, and businesspeople.

Hippocrene Books’ popular introductory guide to Polish now comes with 2 audio CDs! The book teaches the basics of Polish grammar and vocabulary in 11 easy-to-follow lessons. The audio CD feature complements the dialogue and grammar sections of the lesson, aiding the reader in understanding the language as spoken. The lessons are developed around topics with such titles as Going through Customs, Checking into a Hotel, and Extending and Accepting an Invitation. The book also includes an introduction to Polish culture and history, and is rounded out with an extensive bilingual glossary for both vocabulary and expressions. This introduction to the Polish language is designed for both classroom use and self-study.

Monte Burch's Pole Building Projects: Over 25 Low-Cost Plans

Monte Burch

Amazon Price: $12.89 List Price: $18.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Storey Publishing, LLC Amazon Marketplace: 40 new & used starting at $8.25

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Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Home Design -> Design & Construction
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Architecture -> Building Types & Styles -> General
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Architecture -> Building Types & Styles -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Easy to follow step-by-step and free plans! 4 out of 5 stars.
18 of 18 people found this review helpful.

This book is great. It has thorough, easy to follow instructions for various pole buildings, and free plans! Excellent for first-timers or experienced builders. Great reference!

Ask Homer at Home Depot 1 out of 5 stars.
11 of 16 people found this review helpful.

I would have returned this book but by the time I paid shipping it wasn't worth it. There is very little in this book of use, almost all of it is outdated, tools and equipment, etc. There are much better books on the market. This one might have been better if it wasn't so old. I have been an architect for 25 years and there just isn't anything in this that is useful. Very disappointing.

Anyone can build a pole building 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

I am not a "construction type person" (actually a pharmacist by profession) but with the help of this book I was able to build a 30'x 22' storage barn. The book was very clear on the basics of building a pole building and provided enough information to complete my project. I am 110% happy with the results of my barn (leaks just a little...which can easily be fixed...but I built it myself) and would recommend this book to anyone that has never built anything before.

Editorial Review:

Barns, garden structures, cabins, and sheds . . . every aspect of building is covered, including site, construction, siding, roofing, windows, finish details. Written for frost-free and deep-frost regions. Selection of Practical Homeowner's, Homeowner's Do-it-Yourself and "HOW-TO" Book Clubs.

Berlitz Polish Phrase Book (Berlitz Phrase Books)

Berlitz

Amazon Price: $8.95 List Price: $8.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Berlitz Guides Amazon Marketplace: 9 new & used starting at $6.24

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Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Small Business & Entrepreneurship -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Small Business & Entrepreneurship -> General AAS
Subjects -> Reference -> Dictionaries & Thesauruses -> Foreign Language -> Polish

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Good Phrase Book 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This is definitely a good phrase book, the pronunciation guide words are a big help. Depending on how far you plan on going with your polish studies, makes a big deal when it comes to purchasing this product. If you are looking to pick up on a few important phrases or common words, this book will serve its purpose. If you looking to learn a bit more than basic communication. I still recommend this book in addition to some other Polish self-learning courses, preferable an audio or CD-ROM tutorial. Like Eurotalk or Rosetta Language Online. This book will help you commit to memory some of the things these programs teach you, while your at the office or out and about, and need a convenient reference to check your memory against. Overall this is a good product.

Editorial Review:

Lounge with locals on the beaches of the Baltic Sea or sing along to Polish folksongs with the Górale (mountaineers) of the Tatry Mountains. The Berlitz Polish Phrase Book contains essential expressions, everyday conversations, and up-to-date words and phrases to help you communicate with confidence and travel with ease. The Berlitz phrase book is the unparalleled market leader in its category.

Beginning Polish: Revised edition, Volume 1 (Yale Language Series)

Alexander M. Schenker

Amazon Price: $31.50 List Price: $38.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Yale University Press Amazon Marketplace: 20 new & used starting at $14.86

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

An effective tool for learning a difficult language 5 out of 5 stars.
100 of 101 people found this review helpful.

For some years I have STARTED to learn the Polish language as a mental exercise. Didn't think it would be too difficult, since I had already taught myself German and Italian and used these languages when visiting Germany and Italy: and had used my high school French and Spanish to good effect when visiting France and Mexico. So you can see that I thought of myself as a natural linguist without formal training. Wanted to learn a slavic language, but not Russian because of the cyrillic (sp?) alphabet, so settled on Polish. I started with the Hugo series. Was baffled. Went on to... shall I name them or only count them? FOUR other teach-yourself methods. I think the trick was the organisation. I'd almost given up hope when I ordered Schenker's Beginning Polish. I opened on Page 1 sometime in October 1998, and now, in January 1999 I am starting on Lesson Eight on page 117 and going to the races. Gentlemen, I raise my proverbial hat to a text which is slowly and inexorably opening the mystery of slavic language to me. The complexity and beauty of Polish are evident even at this early stage. The lessons are so subtly organised, so logically presented, that I am only held up by the need to memorize words that used to leave me baffled and upset, but which in this text gain for me an expanding picture of the interrelationships of words that have very little reference in the languages I already know. Am I making sense? Alexander Schenker in a master at putting the puzzle together in logical baby steps. The only possible problem is that the student had better read EVERY WORD of the explanations, because every word is vital. And when we study alone like this, we don't have a professor to answer questions, but the answers are there if you read carefully. My only regret is that I cannot seem to obtain Volume Two, which is no longer in print.

Editorial Review:

Volume I of this revised edition, which can be used as a classroom textbook or for self-teaching, includes twenty-five lessons each divided into sentences, pronunciation, grammar exercises, and vocabulary. The introduction presents a brief confrontation of Polish and Russian, and a Polish-English glossary lists all the words occurring in the book.

Wiedza Powszechna Compact Polish and English Dictionary

Janina Jaslan, Jan Stanislawski

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: McGraw-Hill Amazon Marketplace: 42 new & used starting at $3.72

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Subjects -> Reference -> Dictionaries & Thesauruses -> Foreign Language -> Polish
Subjects -> Reference -> Dictionaries & Thesauruses -> General
Subjects -> Reference -> Dictionaries & Thesauruses -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great book for English speakers 5 out of 5 stars.
19 of 20 people found this review helpful.

I've went through many English Polish dictionaries and this is the most comprehensive one I've found to date. In most others I have trouble finding the Polish word to translate it back to English. This book seems more well thought out because I find all the words I am looking for, and have used this book for years. I am buying a second one so I can have it handy in the office as well!

Content seems fine, but binding disintegrated. 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I have owned this dictionary for years, and it seems to meet my needs. My only complaint is that the binding on the hardcover edition disintegrated to an extent I've never seen before in any book. I'm very kind to my books, but the spine split on this one not long after buying it. And even where the spine isn't split, pages are falling out.

I'd like to buy another copy to replace the one that's fallen apart, and I would if I knew it would hold together better than the first did.

Editorial Review:

Defines approximately 30,000 words and phrases used in English and Polish.