Xenophobe's Guide to the Poles

This was an excellent book to read. It was recommended to me by my friend who is married to a Polish woman. He is an anthropologist and I am a sociologist. He thought I would be great for me not only because I teach sociology and cover in my classes stereotypes, culture, etc., but also because I was born and raised in Poland. He was very right. I have enjoyed this book tremendously.Poles are described in a very true, but not offensive way. Page after page I had to laugh because of what author said about Polish nature and Polish way of living and doing things - eating, drinking, taking care of places they live in, taking care of their health and talking all the time about their health issues to name the few. All those things that became so clear to me after I moved to the United States and now drive me nuts at times every time I go to Poland.I would strongly recommend it for anyone planning to go to Poland or is friends with Pole(s) and want to understand some of their behavior.

The book is amusing and mostly correct in how Poles see themselves and others see Poles. My US-born children, who don't speak Polish but otherwise consider themselves connected to the country of their grandparents, laughed and liked what they saw in this book. I only wish there was more!

The author clearly grew up and has lived most of her life outside of Poland. She doesn't know the contemporary Poland. She doesn't seem to know that most of the things she writes about perhaps were to some extent true 20-30 years ago but things have changed since then. There are some funny universal bits in the book but most of the time it seems that the book was written in the seventies by someone who visited once and declared herself an expert. The author tries to be funny but she's just uninformed. Shame, other books from the series apart from being funny are also largely accurate. Here, the ratio of informative to mocking disappoints.

Very good and really true book. Not so funny for me, but maybe because I am the Pole...I have only objection to the part about kissing - it is not true that it is common habit to kiss woman in hand. Only older, or even elderly men do this.

I liked it .Sometimes very funny.

LUV IT!!!

Shallow description, poorly researched and mostly stereotypical.

Everything you need to know about Poles is contained in this book in the nutshell: plenty of useful information but with lots of humor. It is concise in format (pocket size) yet very informative. The author is a critical but gifted observer of Polish life from the outside (British) perspective. She likes Poles with all their good and bad habits. This outside perspective and the ability of comparing Polish and British habits is definitively very helpful. I recommend it to everybody who wants to understand deeper Polish tradition and culture, who has family or friends of Polish origin or who wants to visit Poland soon. Without doubts I give it a straight "A".

Lots of fun in this and at first I was optimistic about what I was learning about Poles, until I read about bribery and the mafia, which deflated my estimates. Worst of all: no mention what many people have felt to be Poland's greatest gift to the world. For more than 130 years, millions have people have chosen to learn Esperanto as a solution to the problem of communication in a world of 6,000 or so languages. Zamenhof merits a mention, I think.

Not exactly a cure for xenophobia is it? One or two interesting factoids, one good joke and the other I've forgotten already!There are, by the way three 'z's not two! There is the normal Z, the z with a dot (rz) and the one with a short oblique above it which sounds like zh or almost like the French J as in "je!"

As a frequent visitor to Poland, I frequently laughed out loud at Era's pin point accurate description of many of my experiences there. Often making me see the reasons behind them too.Highly recommended for anyone, like myself, who has had the privilege of marrying into a Polish family.

a fun little book. full of many interesting little factoids giving a useful cultural insight into a wonderful people. Poles are often maligned due to their presence in large numbers in the UK. However, a little further reading inspired by this book will get you wondering where we would have been without them during the Second World War and after

I have really enjoyed this little book and have now put it on the bedside table in my guest bedroom. I am sorely tempted to highlight the section about Polish hospitality and the food traditionally offered to visitors, just to prepare the unwary guest. My grown up children are still always surprised.