History with its facts and numbers can sometimes be a little abstract, but add the human element – a name and a story – and it can come alive, as Austrian writer and historian Martin Pollack demonstrates with these three great books:
The first book by Martin Pollack I came across was actually his most recent publication. In “Kaiser von Amerika – Die große Flucht aus Galizien” (Emperor of America – The big escape from Galicia) Pollack describes what it meant for emigrants to leave everything behind in Eastern Europe (the book is about the historical region Galicia in Central Europe, between today’s Poland and Ukraine) in the late 19th and early 20th century, in search of a better future in a new land: the promising United States of America. Continue reading
