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Read Ireland Book Reviews, September 2003
A New Anatomy of Ireland:
The Irish Protestants, 1649-1770 by Toby Barnard
What was life like for Irish Protestants
between the mid-seventeenth and late-eighteenth centuries? How did experiences
differ for peers, squires and gentlemen, for soldiers and shopkeepers,
for women and servants? In this eagerly awaited book, the author scrutinizes
social attitudes and structures in every segment of Protestant society
during this formative period. His richly textured account, drawing on
a wide and deep trawl of contemporary sources, focuses on people, their
professions, their preoccupations and their material worlds. The book
abounds with entertaining episodes and memorable characters while reassessing
Ireland’s place in the British state and empire and comparing it to other
European and colonial societies of the time. Through property, power and
position, the Protestant minority dominated Ireland from 1649 to 1770.
The author examines the period thematically rather than chronologically
and analyses how Protestants sought to retain their precarious social
and economic ascendancy. His inquiry provides new insights into not only
this period of Irish history but also into its enduring impact on the
shape and complexity of Irish life.
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Hardship & High Living:
Irish Women’s Lives 1808-1923 by Nellie O Cleairigh
In the 19th century, Irish women lived
extraordinary lives, yet their testimonies are rarely heard. Using original
manuscripts - diaries, memoirs, letters and signed witness statements
- the historian author of this book brings the reader the authentic voices
of a diverse range of women, from society hostesses planning dinner-parties
for prime ministers, to women such as Maria Edgeworth trying to bring
relief to famine victims, to post-Famine emigres and to the destitute
women enduring harsh and brutal regimes in workhouses. This book provides
a fascinating new insight into the reality of women’s lives from 1808
to 1923, a period during which Irish society underwent a complete transformation.
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Dublin Journeys in America
by John Flynn and Jerry Kelleher
This biographical dictionary contains
the concise life stories of 49 outstanding people who have embodied the
close connections between the United States and the city and county of
Dublin, Ireland. The book is a must for all those interested in their
experiences and serves as an indispensable guide to the gallery of extraordinary
individuals who have kept the beacons burning between Dublin and America.
These include Tiger Roche, Jim Larkin, Brendan Behan and Maureen O’Hara.
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Cork Journeys in America
by John Flynn and Jerry Kelleher
This biographical dictionary contains
the concise life stories of 53 outstanding people who have embodied the
close connections between the United States and the city and county of
Cork, Ireland. The book is a must for all those interested in their experiences
and serves as an indispensable guide to the gallery of extraordinary individuals
who have kept the beacons burning between Cork and America. These include
Sir Walter Raleigh, Anne Bonny, Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock.
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Emerald Spirit: A Journey
Into the Irish Heart & Soul by David Stang
This book gives a unique insight into
how the Irish are seen from outside. It covers a wide range of topics
from the famous Irish wit and why the Irish tend to open every conversation
with a discourse on the weather, through to the Irish sense of the supernatural,
fairies, ghosts and demons. In describing his various Irish experiences,
the author deals with the deeply felt Irish sense of place and the acute
awareness of nature in their everyday lives. He also examines the changing
face of religion in Ireland and the spiritual side of the Irish passion
for music. The book draws the reader to a more subtle understanding of
the Irish character. It reveals aspects that are familiar to, but often
overlooked by, the native Irish and which are revelatory to most newcomers.
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Ireland, My Ireland: Memories
from the Heartland by Arnold Meagher
The author of this memoir was born in
the small village of Ballinamuck in County Longford, Ireland. When he
was four, he moved with his family to the larger village of Drumlish,
four and a half miles away. It is in the larger village that he begins
his stories of growing up in Ireland’s heartland, among villagers that
loved to chat, among dew-covered pastures on his grandmother’s farm and
among the fairy forts and whispering bogs that dot the countryside. The
book deals with a rural Ireland of the 1940s and a way of living that
is rapidly disappearing.
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Finding Your Roots Online
by Nancy Hendrickson
This book assist searches on the internet
for valuable, trustworthy and accurate genealogical information. Its structure
is east to follow, and its approach covers the basics of sound genealogical
research. It assists in reading pedigree charts and conducting family
interviews, gather reliable evidence, get the most out of internet resources,
recognize when a research problem can’t be solved online, access military,
marriage and land records, and find useful maps, historical data, migration
patterns, alternative resources and more.
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Wetlands of Ireland: Distribution,
Ecology, Uses and Economic Value edited by Marinus Otte
Ireland is famous for its notoriously
wet and mild climate. Because on average more water precipitates than
evaporates, the island is rich in wetlands - marshes, swamps, bogs, fens,
lagoons, floodplains and wet meadows, to name a few. Wetlands in Ireland
have traditionally been viewed as smelly, dangerous place, best avoided
or ‘reclaimed’. But attitudes have been changing and wetlands are now
regarded as invaluable ecosystems, rich in resources and providing important
ecological services. This book for the first time brings together specialists
in wetland science discussing a wide range of topics from an Irish perspective,
including the ecology, fauna, vegetation and distribution of various types
of wetlands; the use of wetlands for wastewater management; the archaeology
of wetlands; and protection and conservation.
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The Eyes of Ireland: A Guide
to Fine Crafts Artists and Their Studios by Dani O’Reilly
This book delivers the reader to the doors
of some of the best craft artists in Ireland. The author, a professional
photographer, visited over 500 craft studios in her quest to identify
the top artists whose studios were open to the public. These artists work
in metal, ceramics, wood, glass, leather and textiles and are located
in every corner of the island. The result is a wonderful guidebook that
will enthrall anyone interested in fine crafts.
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The Encyclopedia of Ireland
: Brian Lalor (General Editor)
The Encyclopedia of Ireland is the
most comprehensive single-volume reference work ever published about Ireland.
Meticulously detailed, it is a treasure store of information, education,
entertainment, and enlightenment. Its range is astounding as it covers
the entire spectrum of Irish achievement in all fields of human endeavour
throughout recorded history. The
conventional subjects are all here: literature and language, history,
geography, economics, sociology, the arts and music. But other subjects,
often neglected in Irish reference books, are also given their due place,
such as science, engineering, astronomy and sport. With
more than 5000 original articles written by 950 different contributors
and over 700 illustrations, mainly in colour, The Encyclopedia of Ireland
is unique. Unique in scope, in conception, in ambition, in execution,
in the vast array of facts that it contains, in the distinction of its
design, in its total commitment to quality - there is no book about Ireland
remotely like it. This book should
be in every home within the country, and in every home throughout the
world where Ireland is a ‘place that matters’. It is the only reference
book about Ireland anyone will every need.
W.B. Yeats: A Life Vol.
II The Arch-Poet by R. F. Foster
The acclaimed first volume of this
definitive biography of William Butler Yeats (now available in paperback)
left him in his fiftieth year, at a crossroads in his life. The subsequent
quarter-century surveyed in this book takes in his rediscovery of advanced
nationalism and his struggle for an independent Irish culture, his continued
pursuit of supernatural truths through occult experimentation, his extraordinary
marriage, and a series of tumultuous love affairs. Throughout he was writing
his greatest poems: ‘The Fisherman’, and ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ in
their stark simplicity; the magnificently complex sequences on the Troubles
and Civil War; the Byzantium poems; and the radically compressed last
work - some of it literally written on his death bed. The
drama of his life is mapped against the history of the Irish revolution
and the new Irish State founded in 1922. Yeats’s many political roles
and his controversial involvement in a right-wing movement during the
early 1930s are covered more closely than ever before, and his complex
and passionate relationship with the developing history of his country
remains a central theme. Throughout this book, the genesis, alteration,
and presentation of his work (memoirs and polemic as well as poetry) are
explored through his private and public life. The enormous and varied
circle of Yeats’s friends, lovers, family, collaborators and antagonists
inhabit and enrich a personal world of astounding energy, artistic commitment,
and verve. Yeats constantly re-created himself and his work, believing
that art was ‘not the chief end of life but an accident in one’s search
for reality’: a search which brought him again and again back to his governing
preoccupations, sex and death. He also held
that ‘all knowledge is biography’,
a belief reflected in this study of one of the greatest lives of modern
times.
Hope and History: Making
Peace in Ireland by Gerry Adams
Gerry Adams has brought the oldest
revolutionary movement in Ireland on an extraordinary journey from armed
insurrection to active participation in government. An author as well
as an activist, he brings a vivid sense of immediacy and a writer’s understanding
of narrative to this story of the triumph of hope in what was long considered
an intractable bloody conflict. He conveys the tensions of the peace process,
the sense of teetering on the brink, and he has a sharp eye and acute
ear for them humorous foibles of political allies and enemies alike. He
reveals previously unpublished details of the peace process: secret contacts
with the Catholic Church; the inside story on the covert talks between
republicans and the British government; the Irish-American role and meetings
in the White House; the importance of the South African role; differences
within republicanism and the emergence of dissidents; the breakdown of
the first IRA cessation. He speaks candidly about being shot, and discloses
details of his discussions with the IRA. He details for the first time
ever the secret talks to reinstate the IRA cessation, involving Irish,
British and US governments, the IRA leadership and then opposition leader
Tony Blair; and he describes the making of the Good Friday Agreement,
what was agreed and what was promised. He
paints revealing portraits of the other leading characters in the drama
that was acted out through ceasefires and stand-offs, discussions and
confrontations. Amongst these are Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, Mo Mowlam,
Martin McGuinness, Albert Reynolds, Bill & Hilary Clinton, Jean Kennedy
Smith, David Trimble, John Hume, Nelson Mandela, John Bruton and Charles
Haughey. As the pre-eminent republican
strategist of his generation, he provides the first authentic account
of the principles and tactics underpinning modern Irish republicanism.
And in a world where peace processes are needed more urgently than ever,
this book provides a template for conflict resolution processes internationally.
Call Me the Breeze by Patrick
McCabe
This is a novel about a fat man with
glasses. Aviator shades to be precise, which he only wears when he is
about to go on a rampage. Joey Tallon lives in the small close-knit town
of Scotsfield, where dread and death are the neighbours of hilarity and
abandon. We meet Boyle Henry, Hoss and other sharp men of the place, and
watch as they move from brutality and corruption to wealth and respectability.
And Joey transforms himself too. From bovine pie-eating barman to a man
of total organization, a seeker after truth, a holy fool determined to
assuage the community’s guilt for its violent deaths. And it’s love that
has transformed him, his love for Jacy, a beautiful blonde-haired girl,
so very Californian in appearance. Joey wants everyone to know the truth,
but who will believe the testimony of a kidnapper, a fantasist, a jailbird,
when he says he knows what happened to Campbell Morris in the reservoir,
and Detective Tuite in the animal pit? Who wants to hear his stories when
the men of violence are now pillars
of society? But try silencing Joey Tallon. Scotfield’s only true living
genius is gonna tell it like it was This
is a simple story of a complex desire - the story of a relentless quest
for a place called home which exists in a spiritual landscape located
somewhere between Ireland and Iowa. A breath-taking novel which spans
Ireland’s last thirty turbulent years and confirms Patrick McCabe as one
of the finest and most original and exciting Irish novelists writing today.
The Dublin Review Number
12 Autumn 2003 edited by Brendan Barrington
This issue contains: Colm Toibin: Emmet
and the historians; What we do with photographs by Brian Dillon; Anne
Enright: Holles Street Revisited; Diarmaid Ferriter on the Bureau of Military
History; ‘A Member of the Public’ by Judy Kravis; David Wheatley: Somewhere
between Coolock and Donaghmede; Stories by Anthony Caleshu and Tom Lee.
The Poet and the Piper
by Seamus Heaney and Liam O’Flynn
27 poems, read by Seamus Heaney, with
musical accompaniment by Liam O’Flynn on Uilleann pipes, Rod McVey on
Harmonium and Stephen Cooney on guitar. Includes: Digging, Bogland, At
the Wellhead, The Otter, The Yellow Bittern, The Tollund Man, Midterm
Break, Clearances 3, Clearances 5, Two Lorries, A Call, Seeing Things
- Section 3, St. Kevin and the Blackbird, the Annals Say, Postscript.
Liner essay by Ciaran Carson.
Into the Quiet Stream:
Selected Poems of W.B. Yeats
Combining the poetry of W.B. Yeats, the sounds of nature and a range of
traditional Irish airs, Ernie Lyons and Tony Deffely present some of Yeats’s
best loved poems in a haunting and evocative way. The poems are embedded
in the relaxing and dramatic natural and musical sounds of old Ireland.
Poems included are: The Stolen Child, To a Child dancing in the Wind,
He hears the Cry of the Sedge, September 1913, Down by the Salley Gardens,
Never Give all the Heart, Red Hanrahan’s Song about Ireland, Ephemera,
The Lake Isle of Inishfree, Politics, The Wild Swans at Coole, The Song
of Wandering Aengus, Easter 1916, He wishes for the Clothes of Heaven,
The Cap and Bells, The White Birds, The Host of the Air, Under Ben Bulben.
Presented by Ernie Lyons and Tony Deffely.
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