SCRIBNER
SPRING 2009
TaBlE of CoNTENTS
Scribner Spring 2009 Titles
4
Titles Recently Added But Not Cataloged
37
Backlist
45
Subsidiary Rights
55
Indexes
59
Witold Rybczynski
My Two Polish Grandfathers
And Other Essays on the Imaginative Life
award-winning and critically acclaimed writer Witold
Rybczynski delivers a revelatory collection of linked autobio-
graphical essays—part memoir, part family history—about
the upheavals of European lives during World War II, his own
intellectual development, and the universal languages of art,
music, and architecture.
Witold Rybczynski paints a fascinating portrait of his
parents and grandparents in pre-war Warsaw—a
thriving, cultured family in a then sophisticated
European city. With the onset of war, their world fell apart.
His mother and father made separate escapes, reuniting
against many odds, on a ship bound for Scotland from
Marseilles.
That people can lose everything, overcome stunning odds
to survive, remake themselves in a foreign country, learn a new
language and culture, and then do it again—is extraordinary.
My Two Polish Grandfathers is testimony to the boundaryless
world of art, architecture, and music—the universal languages
that can be transported from one country to another—and
clear affirmation of Rybczynski’s own path toward becoming
one of today’s most original thinkers.
Beautifully written, thoughtful, and extraordinarily subtle,
this riveting work offers a rare glimpse into the development
of Rybczynski’s educated, outsider’s eye and is a tribute to
a European generation that has helped to define post-war
American culture.
“Compelling...wonderfully readable...explains why america
looks the way it does.”
—The Wall Street Journal, on Last Harvest
Witold Rybczynski has written about architecture for The New York
Times, Time, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Slate.com. He is the author
of the critically acclaimed book Home and the award-winning A Clearing in
the Distance. He lives with his wife in Philadelph