NEW REVIEW!
from THE SARMATION REVIEW, SEPEMBER 2009
"Pe Ell is a town in the state of Washington, pop. 657 in the 2000 census. For reasons detailed in these two books, the town attracted Polish immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. German and Swiss immigrants also settled in Pe Ell. But even though the Poles formed a majority of the settlers according to Kowalski’s books, 2009 Wikipedia lists only 8.5 percent of Pe Ell’s population as Polish.”
"Kowalski’s books are a valuable addition to the emerging corpus of Polish diaspora writings (Professor John Guzlowski has dedicated a website to the subject). The author, a retired steamship company executive and former resident of Pe Ell, tells the stories of many Polish families. They were the salt of the earth, the kind of pioneers America used to attract generations ago. But if Poles were so numerous in Pe Ell, why do they now compose only 8.5 percent of the population? Polish identity seems difficult to shed, as illustrations in these books indicate; why then are the numbers are so low here and in other localities?"
The Sarmatian Review is a scholarly Polish American journal published quarterly at Rice University in Texas. It was conceived by a group of American Polish scholars who observed a dearth of scholarly journals on Polish American points of view. The name comes from Sarmatia, a semi-legendary name for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a multoi-cultural state that spanned most of Easterm Europe from the 16th to 18th Century.
from POLISH AMERICAN STUDIES JOURNAL:
"Leo Kowalski's community history of the Poles in Pe Ell is an important first step to ensure that the history of Polonia in the Pacific Northwest is not forgotten."
- John Radzilowski,
University of Alaska, Southeast
from POLISH AMERICAN STUDIES JOURNAL
V. 65, Autumn 2008
NEW Reader REVIEW!
"Both of Mr. Kowalski's books are excellent, they are highly professional. The photos on both covers and the maps of Poland on the inside covers of the Pioneers are quite unique and the book has a very attractive appearance.
The Family Histories for a lifetime Polish American Historian as myself makes great reading. It preserves the Polish character of the Polish community within the American community of yesteryear of Pe Ell, Washington for today and tomorrow. The summation at the end of the book is a fitting ending to your narrative.
There are not enough of these type of books written within the Polish American community."
Mr. Walter Lasinski
worked with the Standard Oil Co for 42 years, and is now in his 30th year of a second career as a Polish American Historian. As the Chairman for some years of the PNCC-Commission on History Archives, he was the editor of PNCC Studies the history annual of the PNCC. Mr. Lasinski served on the Polish American Historical Association (PAHA) National Board, and continues to be active with The Kosciuszko Foundation, the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences (PIASA), and the The Pilsudski Institute.