God's Playground

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox book God's Playground: A History of Poland is a history book in two volumes written by Norman Davies, covering a 1000-year history of Poland. Volume 1: The origins to 1795, and Volume 2: 1795 to the present first appeared as the Oxford Clarendon Press publication in 1981 and have since been reprinted in multiple times,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and translated into Polish as Boże igrzysko : Historia Polski by Elżbieta Tabakowska (2 volumes in 1, with 1183 pages by Znak Publishers of Kraków).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Davies was inspired to the title by Jan Kochanowski's 1580s poem Boże igrzysko ("Mankind: Bauble of the Gods").

The book, which most editions split into two volumes, has received favourable reviews in the international press, and is considered by many historians<ref>"This is a remarkable book... this is a major work that is imaginative, thought-provoking and extremely well written".-- Piotr S. Wandycz, review in The American Historical Review, Vol. 88, No. 2 (April 1983), pp. 436-437, JSTOR
L. R. Lewitter, review in The Historical Journal, Vol. 26, No. 4 (December 1983), pp. 1032-1034 JSTOR Template:Webarchive
Anna M. Cienciala, review in the Slavic Review, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 510-512, JSTOR</ref> and other scholars to be one of the best English-language books on the subject of the history of Poland. The author received several Polish honours.Template:Clarify

Selected editions

English

• God's Playground, Columbia University Press, 1979
• God's Playground, Oxford University Press, 1981, Template:ISBN (vol. 1), Template:ISBN (vol. 2)
• God's Playground, Columbia University Press, 1982, Template:ISBN (vol. 1) and Template:ISBN (vol. 2)
• God's Playground, Columbia University Press, 1983
• God's Playground, Oxford University Press, 1983, Template:ISBN (vol. 2)
• God's Playground, Columbia University Press, 1984, Template:ISBN (vol.1), Template:ISBN (vol. 2)
• God's Playground, Oxford University Press, 2005, Template:ISBN (vol. 1) and Template:ISBN (vol. 2)
• God's Playground, Columbia University Press, 2005, Template:ISBN (vol. 1), Template:ISBN (vol. 2)

Polish

• Boże igrzysko, bibuła edition in the 1980s
• Boże igrzysko, ZNAK 1989, Template:ISBN
• Boże igrzysko, ZNAK 1994, Template:ISBN
• Boże igrzysko, ZNAK 1999
• Boże igrzysko, ZNAK 2006, Template:ISBN

External links

• Google Books online preview
• An edition is available at archive.org.