In this scholarly work, "Poland and Russia: The Neighborhood of Freedom and Despotism in the X-XXI Centuries," Professor Andrzej Nowak reviews the history of Poland through the lens of its relations with Russia and presents the ideological beliefs Russia employed throughout its history to achieve its foreign policy objectives through interactions with Poland and the region’s Central and Eastern European states. Unsurprisingly, readers will learn that Russian and Polish political and cultural traditions evolved as polar opposites. Translated from Polish into English (and German) and published in 2023, Nowak’s ten chapters are superbly illustrated and chock-full of facts that Polish-American and other readers will find highly interesting and compelling. The professor is a Russian speaker and leading world expert on Russian history and its political philosophy. In his work, he reveals the deeply rooted sources of the Russian state’s mentality that has driven its persistent aggression and expansionism, the most recent example of which is Putin’s war with Ukraine.