Call centers, “white goods,” cars, cars, and more cars: Poland, the largest EU member state in Eastern Europe, is also booming in a success story that resembles a phoenix rising from the ashes. No other country in Europe was bullied by its neighbors as badly as Poland was for centuries. At various times in their history, Poles found themselves ruled (and their nation’s borders shifted) by Russia, Austria, Prussia, and later Germany. At one point, Poland even disappeared from European maps altogether. The reason for this unwanted attention was Poland’s standing as the breadbasket of Europe, because grain from its large agrarian estates was shipped down the Vistula River to ports in Gdansk, and from there to Western Europe. The communist regime focused on industrial production during the Cold War, but by the end of the 1990s many of the country’s major industrial facilities had been shut down. Those that remained were modernized, and they are now successfully competing with industrial manufacturers from around the world. Poland’s strong economic growth today (six percent annually on average) is largely due to its booming electrical and automotive industries, as well as its flourishing service sector.