Leopold Tyrmand, a Polish Jew who survived World War II by working in Germany under a false identity, would go on to live and write under Poland s Communist regime for twenty years before emigrating to the West, where he continued to express his deeply felt anti-Communist views. "Diary 1954" written after the independent weekly paper that employed him was closed for refusing to mourn Stalin s death is an account of daily life in Communist Poland. Like Czes aw Mi osz, Vaclav Havel, and other dissidents who described the absurdities of Soviet-backed regimes, Tyrmand exposes the lies big and...