Nowa Huta

This book will appeal to anyone interested in recent Polish history and culture, and has much to offer to those interested in post-socialist transitions, urban anthropology, post-industrialization, and memory. Pozniak's prose is accessible and she has a gift for concisely summarizing for the non-expert complex political and social changes in the region. As a result, her book will appeal to undergraduates. At the same time, Pozniak explores important questions about how hegemonic narratives are created and disseminated, about how they are used as tools to situate oneself vis-a-vis state projects, and about how they marginalize some and valorize others. Her explorations of these questions are subtle and profound to interest the professional scholar. And the fact that this is accomplished through the lens of Nowa Huta, a district experiencing multiple transitions, gives the book both humanity and allure.

Pozniak's richly detailed and sympathetic portrayal is worthy of a wide audience.

Well -written and engaging. Successfully highlights the salience of locality in mediating between personal experiences and public history. Should be of interest to urban scholars, anthropologists and sociologists not only working on eastern Europe but also to those attentive to local transformations generated by the global shift to neoliberalism.

Kinga Pozniak presents a fascinating study of generations of memory in Nova Huta, the enormous planned city built to house tens of thousands of steel workers on the edge of Krakow. Intended to be a showcase of proletarian life, the end of Communism and global economic changes have left residents with challenges and often conflicting memories. Pozniak lets the people of Nova Huta speak for themselves and brings their past to life. This important book is thoroughly absorbing, invariably perceptive, and a pleasure to read.

Filled with compelling stories and reflections from residents of Poland's classic industrial town, this book provides one of the most illuminating accounts yet of changes in work and life from socialism to capitalism. Pozniak rejects the stale framework of 'nostalgia' and shows us memory as valuable sociological commentary. Her informants show a remarkable, non-ideological common sense that offers profound insights not just about transitions but about contemporary global capitalism. What a wonderful read!

Nowa Huta is about far more than the socialist company town and the Solidarity resistance that put it on the world map. Kinga Pozniak shows, masterfully, a brick-and-mortar setting in action as it becomes the stuff of negotiated memories and identities amid sweeping political, economic, and societal change. Nowa Huta is a fascinating treatise on 'sites of memory' everywhere.