This is a select bibliography of English language books (including translations) and journal articles about the history of Poland. This bibliography specifically excludes non-history related works and self-published books.

Works listed here are cited in the notes or bibliographies of scholarly sources. Each is published by an academic or major press, written by a recognized expert, or substantially reviewed in scholarly journals; borderline cases are omitted. A selection of primary sources are included. Many of the books below carry their own bibliographies; see the Further reading section for other bibliographies, and the External links section for historical sites, academic sites, and museums.

Citations follow APA style. Book have citations to academic journal or mainstream published reviews when available. For books only partly about the subject, relevant chapter or section titles are provided when useful and available. Translators of the original-language edition are included when possible. In cases where a title or name has appeared with more than one English spelling, the most recent published form is used and a footnote documents any earlier title under which the work appeared.

General surveys Biskupski, M. B. B. (2018). The History of Poland. Westport: Greenwood Publishing. Connelly, J. (2020). From Peoples into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dabrowski, P. M. (2016). Poland: The First Thousand Years. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Davies, N. (1982/1983). God's Playground: A History of Poland (2 vols.). New York: Columbia University Press. Davies, N. (2001). Heart of Europe: A Short History of Poland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leslie, R. (2009). The History of Poland Since 1863 (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lukowski, J., & Zawadzki, H. (2019). A Concise History of Poland (3rd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prażmowska, A. (2004). A History of Poland. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Prażmowska, A. (2010). Poland: A Modern History. London: I.B. Tauris. Stachura, P. D. (1999). Poland in the Twentieth Century. New York: St. Martin's Press. Watt, R. M. (1979). Bitter Glory: Poland and Its Fate. New York: Simon & Schuster. Zamoyski, A. (1989). The Polish Way: A Thousand Years' History of the Poles and their Culture. New York: Hippocrene Books. Zamoyski, A. (2009). Poland: A History. New York: Hippocrene Books. Cambridge History (1951). Cambridge history of Poland (Vols. 1–2). London: Cambridge

Regional surveys

Borderlands studies Budurowycz, B. (1983). Poland and the Ukrainian Problem, 1921–1939. Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne Des Slavistes, 25(4), 473–500. Davies, B. (2007). Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 1500–1700. Dabrowski, P. M. (2021). The Carpathians: Discovering the Highlands of Poland and Ukraine (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies). DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Kaminski, A. S. (1993). Republic vs. Autocracy Poland-Lithuania and Russia 1686–1697 (Harvard Series In Ukrainian Studies). Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Marzec, W., & Turunen, R. (2018). Socialisms in the Tsarist Borderlands: Poland and Finland in a Contrastive Comparison, 1830–1907. Contributions to the History of Concepts, 13(1), 22–50. Rieber, A. J. (2014). The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands: From the Rise of Early Modern Empires to the End of the First World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Snyder, T. (2004). The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999. New Haven: Yale University Press. Snyder, T. (2010). Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books. Staliūnas, D. (2007). Between Russification and Divide and Rule: Russian Nationality Policy in the Western Borderlands in mid-19th Century. Jahrbücher Für Geschichte Osteuropas, 55(3), 357–373. Staliūnas, D., & Aoshima, Y., (eds.). (2021). The Tsar, the Empire, and the Nation: Dilemmas of Nationalization in Russia's Western Borderlands, 1905–1915. Historical Studies in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Budapest: Central European University Press. Thaden, E. (1984). Russia's Western Borderlands, 1710–1980, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Ther, P., & Kreutzmüller, C. (2014). The Dark Side of Nation-States: Ethnic Cleansing in Modern Europe. New York: Berghahn Books. Von, H. & Herbert J. (2011). War in a European Borderland: Occupations and Occupation Plans in Galicia and Ukraine; 1914–1918. Seattle, WA: University of Washington.

Prehistory Under construction

Piast era Górecki, P. (1992). Economy, Society, and Lordship in Medieval Poland 1100–1250. New York: Holme and Meier. Górecki, P. (1993). Parishes, Tithes and Society in Earlier Medieval Poland c. 1100–c. 1250. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 83(2), i–146. Knoll, P. (1972). The Rise of the Polish Monarchy: Piast Poland in East Central Europe, 1320–1370. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Manteuffel, T. (1982). The Formation of the Polish State: The Period of Ducal Rule, 963–1194. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Jagiellonian era Under construction

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth era Butterwick, R. (2021). The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1733–1795: Light and Flame. New Haven: Yale University Press. Friedrich, K., & Pendzich, B. (2008). Citizenship and Identity in a Multinational Commonwealth: Poland-Lithuania in Context, 1550–1772 (Illustrated ed.) (Studies in Central European Histories). Leiden: Brill. Frost, R. I. (1993). After the Deluge: Poland-Lithuania and the Second Northern War 1655–1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frost, R. I. (2015). The Oxford History of Poland-Lithuania: Volume I: The Making of the Polish-Lithuanian Union, 1385–1569. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hundert, G. D. (2004). Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kaminski, A. S. (1993). Republic vs. Autocracy: Poland-Lithuania and Russia, 1686–1697 (Harvard Series In Ukrainian Studies). Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Lukowski, J. (1991). Liberty's Folly: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Eighteenth Century. London: Routledge. Rosman, M. (1990). The Lords' Jews: Magnate–Jewish Relations in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth During the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Stone, D. Z. (2001). The Polish-Lithuanian State, 1386–1795 (History of East Central Europe). Seattle: University of Washington Press. Korzon, T. (1897). Wewne̦trzne Dzieje Polski za stanisława Augusta (Vols. 1–6). Thomson, G. S. (1947). Catherine the Great and the Expansion of Russia. Grey, I. (1961). Catherine the Great. Bain, R. N. (1909) The last king of Poland: and his contemporaries.

Partitioned Poland Akelev, E.V., & Gornostaev, A.V. (2023). Millions of Living Dead: Fugitives, the Polish Border, and 18th-Century Russian Society. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 24(2), 269-297. Blobaum, R. E. (1995). Rewolucja: Russian Poland, 1904–1907. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kaplan, H. (1962). The First Partition of Poland. New York: Columbia University Press. Leslie, R. F. (1969). Polish Politics and the Revolution of November 1830. Westport: Greenwood Press. Leslie, R. F. (1970). Reform and Insurrection in Russian Poland 1856–1863. Westport: Praeger. Lukowski, J. (1999). The Partitions of Poland 1772, 1793, 1795. London: Longman. Porter, B. (2000). When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rolf, M., & Klohr, C. (2021). Imperial Russian Rule in the Kingdom of Poland, 1864–1915. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Staliūnas, D. (2007). Between Russification and Divide and Rule: Russian Nationality Policy in the Western Borderlands in mid-19th Century. Jahrbücher Für Geschichte Osteuropas, 55(3), 357–373. Thaden, E. C. (2016). Russia's Western Borderlands, 1710–1870 (Princeton Legacy Library). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ury, S. (2012). Barricades and Banners: The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Warsaw Jewry''' (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture). Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Wandycz, P. (1975). The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795–1918. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Weeks, T. R. (1996). Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863–1914. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Zamoyski, A. (2000). Holy Madness: Romantics, Patriots and Revolutionaries 1776–1871. New York: Viking. Zamoyski, A. (2012). 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow. New York: HarperPress. Zimmerman, J. D. (2003). Poles, Jews and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Czarist Russia 1892–1914. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

World War I

Boysen, J. (2016). Imperial Service, Alienation, and an Unlikely National "Rebirth": The Poles in World War I. In G. Barry, E. Dal Lago, & R. Healy (Eds.), Small Nations and Colonial Peripheries in World War I. Leiden: Brill. Hagen, W. W. (2018). Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hapak, J. T. (2016). Prelude to Arms: Polonia and the Struggle for Polish Independence in World War I. The Polish Review, 61(1), 81–89. Kauffman, J. (2015). Elusive Alliance: The German Occupation of Poland in World War I (Illustrated ed.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Latawski, P. (Ed.). (1992). The Reconstruction of Poland 1914–23. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Stokłosa, K. (2018). Catholicism and Patriotism in Poland during the First World War. Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, 31(1), 184–93. Watson, A. (2020). The Fortress: The Siege of Przemysl and the Making of Europe's Bloodlands. New York: Basic Books. Zimmerman, J. D. (2022). The Polish Legions and the Beginnings of World War I. In Jozef Pilsudski: Founding Father of Modern Poland (pp. 222–249). Harvard University Press.

Polish-Soviet War

Interwar Blanke, R. (1990). The German Minority in Inter–War Poland and German Foreign Policy. Journal of Contemporary History, 25(1), 87–102. Böhler, J. (2019). Civil War in Central Europe, 1918–1921: The Reconstruction of Poland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Drzewieniecki, W. M. (1981). The Polish Army on the Eve of World War II. The Polish Review, 26(3), 54–64. Friedman, P. (1949). Polish Jewish Historiography between the Two Wars (1918–1939). Jewish Social Studies, 11(4), 373–408. Garboś, M. R. (2018). Revolution and the Defence of Civilization: Polish Visions of Nationhood, Property and Territory in Right-Bank Ukraine (1917–22). The Slavonic and East European Review, 96(3), 469–506. Gross, J. T. (1988). Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Expanded ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Holzer, J. (1977). The Political Right in Poland, 1918–39. Journal of Contemporary History, 12(3), 395–412. Korbonski, A. (1988). Civil-Military Relations in Poland Between the Wars: 1918–1939. Armed Forces & Society, 14(2), 169–89. Kornat, M. (2009). Choosing Not to Choose in 1939: Poland's Assessment of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. The International History Review, 31(4), 771–97. Magowska, A. (2014). The Unwanted Heroes: War Invalids in Poland after World War I. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 69(2), 185–220. Materski, W. (2000). The Second Polish Republic in Soviet Foreign Policy (1918–1939). The Polish Review, 45(3), 331–45. Moss, K. B. (2021). An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.