C++ :: Installing And Using Libraries (And Including Dependencies With Binaries)

I've worked a lot in Java and Perl and now I'm learning C++ and working on a simple e-reader (let's not get into why I'm not just using Kindle or other existing ones). This is for me and a number of friends.

At first my project will be on OS X, then Windows and Linux, and I hope to eventually use it on Android and iOS. I know that the last two will require separate GUIs, but I'm hoping the rest of the code will port easily.

Here's the problem:

I'm using Poppler to read and display PDF files. I started installing it on my iMac and it needs FontConfig, which is turning out to be a difficult install. I would not want to walk others through this or make them have to install Poppler and FontConfig (and any other libraries I find both need).

I thought I could just compile my final binaries using "-static" but I've been reading about how some libraries can't be statically linked or compiled.

Also, since I want to eventually port this to 4 other OSes (and apparently Poppler can work on those target OSes), I don't want to do something now or depend on something that will make it hard or impossible to port to other OSes later.

With that in mind, here are my questions:

1) Why is it some libraries cannot be compiled statically? How do I know if I'm dealing with one of those libraries?

2) Am I right that I could compile this program statically, and the resulting binary would include code from Poppler and FontConfig and other libraries would be included in the resulting executable binary?

3) What do I need to watch for so I can tell if using a particular library will be a problem when I need to port my program to a new OS? (Assuming, of course, that searching shows that library will compile or has been ported to that OS.)