There were two main characters in the Livonian War - the Polish king Stefan Batory and the Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible. The success of the parties in the confrontation depended on their worldviews, personal qualities, and attitude towards their subjects. The result is known: the war exhausted the strength of the Muscovite kingdom, while the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth turned into the strongest state in eastern Europe. Witold Novodvorsky's book is based primarily on Polish sources. The author clearly sympathizes with the Polish side, does not miss an opportunity to talk about the cruelty of Ivan the Terrible and the unsightly sides of Russian life and at the same time almost always finds words to justify any actions of the army of Stefan Batory, polemicizes in his assessment of the episodes of the Livonian War with N. M. Karamzin and S. M. Soloviev. But this is precisely what makes his book interesting. It is always useful to look at events from an unexpected perspective, especially since the reader is exposed to many details that cannot be found in outstanding Russian historians. The book is published in a new edition, made specifically for this edition.