This large-format book was a present from a Polish student and is essentially a coffee-table guide to the country. The chapters are entitled: Geography; Cities; Churches; Palaces, Castles and Manor Houses; and Nature. It was probably wise not to include one on the history of Poland, although the text of other chapters hints at it: ‘Expansion of [Warsaw] was disrupted by World War II when over 70% of the buildings were destroyed’. Well, it would be.
One of the longer chapters consists of descriptions of major cities and towns, with a couple of photographs of each, showing the best views. It would seem that Gdynia, for example, has little to commend it, but many other places have attractive buildings. And this leads to a drawback with the book. If one were about to visit Poland and wanted some idea of what was worth looking at in the area one was going to, it would be very difficult to locate the appropriate photographs. There is no index or map, and the places are arranged (as far as I can tell) in decreasing order of size. A similar observation applies to the chapter on churches (which includes other places of worship too) and the one on palaces and other secular buildings.