

The history of Europe, Poland, Wroclaw... Norman Davies’s books have focused on various places and periods, but they have always been a starting point for many fascinating discussions. One will have to wait and see what he has next in the pipeline – details can be found here!
The irrepressible Norman Davies returns with yet another weighty tome. This time he is aided by his former student Roger Moorhouse, who also assisted with Davies's The Isles: A History. Such is the ambition of Microcosm that Davies enlisted the research skills of a further 60 specialists, which may leave you wondering whether this compendious book is itself best read in teams.
The city in question is Wroclaw in Silesia, west Poland, now a thriving university city 190km south-west of Warsaw and 160km from the German border. Wroclaw's location in the corridor of central Europe, 'the lands in-between', granted it a position on the busiest east-west trade routes, and since its origination in the eighth century the city has attracted a relentless flow of migrants, and no end of trouble.
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There is a lesson for us all in the thousand-year history of a central European city.