I'm pretty new to learning history and treating it as something above "obligatory shit that I need to pass and be done with", but the more I read the more I'm leaning toward the words I heard once: "If you think that the world you live in has nothing interesting to write a story about, you likely know precisely shit about history". kleinbl00's recommendation of Destiny Disrupted made me reconsider my views on that topic more and more with each page. You seem to have a TV drama that I would watch with glee. Please, keep to the work and do your best. :DThere is conflict, and drama, and love, and deviousness, and family, and strong women, and real native americans presented in a realistic way, and it's all based on actual historical events!
I hated history throughout school... and almost the day I graduated, I fell deeply in love with it. There's a good place to start: Lies My Teacher Told Me It is an unfortunate title (not chosen by the author!!) that seems to lay the blame in the wrong place, but regardless of the poorly selected title, the content is a fantastic look at why history - REAL history - is important, and how our culture teaches terrible history due to systemic failures. Which will eventually lead you to looking into how history schoolbooks are chosen by a few utter nutballs in Texas with big religious axes to grind, and little knowledge of history.... and piss you off so bad, you will have no end to your rage. And then you'll realize that history is many things, and not one thing, and that you will find a specific time or place or people who will interest you, and you will read/learn about them from many different angles, and wind up with a rich understanding of them, yourself, culture, and humanity. It's a glorious journey. Enjoy it!
I don't have any title recommendations for you. My suggestion would be to approach it from another angle: Poland as a country is very interesting to Poles, but not so much to other cultures outside of Poland. However, Slavic languages and their history, permutations, and changes over time, is a rich area of research (linguistics) that is interesting to a very broad group of people. So I would suggest that you research the history and development of the Slavic languages, if you want to learn more about Poland and the Polish people. I am quite opposed to most forms of organized religion. But the study of history is the study of religion. You cannot separate the two topics. A good place to start is Who Wrote The Bible? which is an investigative look into the Bible and biblical history. The scientific approach they take to dissecting the different authors, timeframes when certain parts were written, the politics of the times and motivations of the writers, etc, is one of the best detective stories ever! Near the end the author makes some pretty big leaps to try and come up with a whopper ending for the book (by trying to actually name a specific author of one part of the Bible), but overall this is a fantastic book that takes an in-depth look at how religions get constructed. It's a well-written book that is fun to read, but also provides some amazing insights into several of the world's main religions. And it provides you with the tools you need to critically examine other sources and information you come across when looking at Polish history. Good luck with it! Actually, the odds are slim that you would just happen to know much about that but I'll ask anyway: do you happen to know of some non-Polish books about history of Poland?
Surprisingly, and despite popular stereotype, religion does not seem to have much sway on most things related to schools...