Polish and Proud | Push Not the River

Catherine and Hilary Clinton | Push Not the River | James Conroyd Martin

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	• Push Not the River James Conroyd Martin St. Martin's Griffin, 2004 - 528 pages average customer review:based on 71 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Wonderful book - judge for yourself!

Rather than repeat the words of the reader-written reviews below (most of which deservedly give Push Not the River five stars), I'd simply urge you to buy the book and ignore the rotten Publishers Weekly review that Amazon includes by default. Not only did the PW reviewer get the author's gender incorrect in the original review (conveniently fixed in the version above), but s/he also gets one major fact wrong, and I can't help but wonder if s/he actually read the whole thing. "Devotes more space to romantic drama than historical detail"? Again, are we talking about the same novel? PNTR should serve as a great introduction to anyone interested in romantic epics steeped in well-researched history. Even those readers who don't know a thing about the history of Poland should appreciate this wonderful novel.

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Polish and Proud

This is a novel of history and romance and should be read be all inclined to understand the Polish character. I disagree with the PW review about Martin's telling of the story slowing down the reading. I could not put the book down. It was enlighening to see how people existed in Poland just as the constitution was being drafted. Unfortunately Poland was partioned shortly there after.
If you like a great romance novel read this one. If you like the truth about life and times in Poland during the 18th century this is a great true novel.

Catherine and Hilary Clinton

Catherine the Great of Russia has been a real problem for the women's movement. In her day she was the richest and most powerful Ruler in the world. She married the Czar of Russia and had him murdered before he could have her committed. She took his place on the Russian throne and then, during an interregnum in Poland, forced a Polish lover of hers onto the throne using her own military as an escort. This lover became more than the obliging puppet-ruler she expected when he drafted Europe's first Constitution (the 2nd in the World after the U.S) offering peasants equal rights and property, Catherine sent in her army to revoke it, claiming she was aiding the Polish Nobility's Golden Freedom. When most of Poland dared to fight back against her army, she arranged for Prussia and Austria to descend on the weakening country and take neighboring portions of the nation for themselves. She then sent her current lover, Suvorov, to Warsaw to arrest and imprison her ex-lover and massacre as many civilians as possible so that they would never ask for equal rights, privileges and Constitutions again. He lit one end of a bridge on fire that was full of fleeing Warsaw/Praga citizens and then the Russian Calvary forced the families into the flames or into the freezing Vistula River. Instead of the liberty and rights most of the people wanted, they could decide on the death of their choice.

Poland disappeared from the map of Europe for 125 years. The citizens that remained in the Russian part of Poland became Catherine's "serfs" and descended into lives of ignorance, disease and poverty. During Catherine's reign, 90% of Russia's population was forced into serfdom. For 125 years there were numerous wars, revolutions, retaliations, pogroms and executions across Eastern Europe because no one could crush the three large, authoritarian monarchies. Poland's resurrection came only after World War 1 and the Communist Revolution had destroyed them all. But 20 years later World War 2 and the Holocaust began when Germany/Austria and Soviet Russia, using Catherine's method, attacked and dismembered Poland once again.

Catherine The Great with a military at her command, created the world's greatest wound, a region which has not completely healed 207 years later. No world leader EVER gifted the world with such a horrendous legacy as Catherine. Now this exciting novel, "Push Not the River", portrays the incident commonly known as the Polish Partitions using the shadow of the real Catherine the Great and real characters of all rank and station. Pre-partition Poland and its culture and customs is brought to life for the first time since Henryk Sienkiewicz's Polish sagas.

"Push Not the River" flows against the tide of Political Correctness. In "Push Not the River", the more powerful the women are in status and wealth, such as the character Zofia, the more unhappy is her outcome and the more damage she does to her lovers, friends and families. Anna, the heroine, takes her father's advice and puts herself in the way of destiny , reacting but never attacking, never losing sight of herself or her goals. She choses to "push not the river" but flow with it. She sifts through the good and the bad and, by the end of the novel, pretty much ends up with everything she wants in life but the independent country she loved.

Still, the women in the novel are portrayed as fiercly patriotic and dedicated to the cause of defying Catherine as the men. They often provide hilarious insight into Catherine's character and activities that most of the men in the novel prefer not to notice. Catherine herself is given the same treatment as Sauron in "Lord of the Rings", invisible but ever-present, casting her shadow over the adoption of Poland's May 3rd Constitution. No History Channel historian can ever call Catherine the Great a "visionary" with "great organizational skills" again.

This may be the reason that the author had a hard time finding a publisher for the novel and originally self-published. Here we learn about the real, unexpurgated soul of Catherine the Great through the eyes and lives of several of her Polish opponents and collaborators who only wanted to live their lives as harmlessly as possible.

It's about a time when those with vision found it wise to die for their country and their freedom because the only alternative was a life ruled by Catherine the Great, a land-thief, nation-eradicator, and dictatorial enslaver of the poor and oppressed. And she did it all in the name of The Enlightenment or The Golden Freedom. But for Poland, Catherine was both the fire AND the freezing water at the end of the bridge to equal rights and freedom.

This is an exciting book on an important piece of history, maybe THE most important piece of history. After reading "Push Not the River", you'll look around you and wonder why you never were told of the Polish Partitions, and then you'll look around you at the world today and the U.S. elections and you'll know EXACTLY why you never were told of the Polish Partitions.

If you are sick of politically correct distortions, you'll never be sorry for reading "Push Not the River". If you like things 'liberal', write a lukewarm review for Publisher's Weekly and discuss the "characters of the novel not coming to life". These words are just a cover up for saying: "the truth about Catherine is told in this book. The truth is not good for our politics at this time". These biased people will then go out and campaign for Hilary and other politicians just because they're female and they want something different and 'non-conservative". So this book is really not to be missed. It can serve as a warning and it's written for people who can face the truth and still care.

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Exiting Reading

Push Not the River is a very thrilling and highly entertaining novel set against an unusual histrorical backdrop, the fateful events and turmoil characterizing late 18th century Poland. The story is based on a real 18th-century person's diary and represents a fast-moving and exciting, yet touching and colorful, tale of a young woman's struggle to achieve her almost insurmountable personal goals. The story is built on a unique social setting and deals with the life styles at the time of Poland's minor gentry against a tumultuous political climate that led to the collapse of the last Polish kingdom, that of Stanislaus II Poniatowski. The novel is duely reflective of the ethos that defined Poland's middle class in those days and accurately portrays the political events that engendered the kingdom's fall. The novel reflects the naivete and innocence of the heroine, Ania, a behavioral bent that represented a large part of ethical Polish society as it existed in those times. The story touches upon the ill-fated attempt of Thaddeus Kosciuszko, one of the hero's of the American Revolutionary War (the Polish military engineer who delayed and boxed British general Burgoyne into unfavorable conditions at Saratoga, ensured the success of the West Point fortifications, and saved Nathaniel Green's army from entrapment in South Carolina), to take charge and reverse the Russian takeover of the Polish kingdom. Not since reading Eric P. Kelly's tales about Poland in a historical setting have I experienced something so exciting. And Kelly, like James Conroyd Martin, was a non-Pole too!

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Historical Fiction at Its Best!

This is one of the finest works of historical fiction to come down the road since the likes of the Nobel Prize winners Henryk Sienkiewicz (With Fire & Sword, The Deluge, Pan Michal) and Wladyslaw S. Reymont (The Peasants and The Year 1794). It is based on an actual diary from a member of Poland's minor gentry and truly depicts the thinking and character of those days. Not since the mid-19th century publication in the English language of Thaddeus of Warsaw has there been anything available to American readers dealing with this period in Polish history. It is well written and absent editorial flaws to which one must become distastefully accustomed in today's publications, and contrary to a so-called professional review, it accurately depicts the naivete of Ania (Anna) and vividly paints the panorama of the conflict during the tumultuous period of the Polish Partitions of 1772, 1793 and 1795. This terrific true story provides the reader with an understanding of the way things were truly perceived by one living the experience, and an understanding of a culture, history, and people as they will never be again.

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