Ireland Books

I first viewed this book at my local library and after going over it, decided to purchase it for my own personal library. The book covers a wide expanse of gardens in Britain, Ireland and not mentioned in the title, Scotland. Book does not give in depth information about layouts of gardens and such, but does contain one or two pics of mentioned gardens and locations in write ups. The photographs are simply beautiful.
The gardens in England are broken down into sectors, such as south-east England or North England for those who may be going to visit. Often, they contain pictures of the manor houses, cottages, castles or architectural elements in the gardens.The book also includes antedotal information about past occupants of houses, gardens or historical events surrounding the houses and gardens. For me, that added immensely to the overall enjoyment of the book. It's a winner.

This large and attractive book is a reference book on over 1,700 of the most beautiful gardens in the British Isles. The largest part of the book is the Guide, in which public-available gardens are discussed, complete with colorful pictures. Grouped by region, each of the gardens is given a quick introduction, a more in-depth description, and important information, including location, size and when open. After the Guide comes the Gazetteer, in which the author looks at many different gardens, including some still privately held and those belonging to cemeteries and hospitals.

Overall, I found this to be a very enjoyable book. I really liked reading the descriptions of the gardens, and the interesting historical notes. The one thing that would have made this book better would have been more pictures. But, it is already a pretty hefty book, and I do realize that adding more pictures would have made it huge.

But, that said this is a very interesting book, especially for anyone who plans on being able to visit these wonderful gardens themselves.

It seems to be commonly believed that Alexander the Great was sexually attracted to both young men and to women. (In fact I've heard that the Greek govenment is suing the recent TV production for claimin this.)

In this book Professor King traces the transition of a society which had subordinated all men, women and boys to higher ranked males to one founded in sexuality. He explores the subject through literature, through the actors on stage, and in portraits from the time.

I found particularily interesting his intrepretation of the many times in Shakespeare's plays that a woman and/or young man exchange identities. (It is perhaps significant that the author worked as a stage manager in Chicago before his teaching career.) This is likely to be a seminal book in gender studies for some years.

King historicizes male sexuality in the Gendering of Men and in so doing challenges those histories that have treated masculinity and male sexuality as a transhistorical given and not as a social construct/ideology that serves specific political (patriarchal) purposes.

Gender theorists, like Judith Butler, have long assumed that gender is performative. That is to say one might be born with a particular sex organ but "gender" is not determined by that sex organ. Thus Butler maintains that gender is not what one is; its what one does. In short "gender" is not a natural category but a practice. Butler argues that gender identity is performative because one constructs what one is in specific social-historical contexts. And those contexts are always changing. In Butler's account new contingencies are always emerging and thus new selves are always emerging in response to new conditions of possibility. However, this does not mean that the individual has any kind of agency in the process for the performativity of masculinity and femininity can be coerced. In fact Butler and King argue that notions of gender (as well as gendered notions of privacy) are underwritten by patriarchal structures.

King argues that in early modern England (1600-1750) body practices were strictly regulated by a pederastic social structure; and that different social spaces/places required the enactment of different body practices. And that because body practices were enacted within a power continuum sexuality was not seen to indicate a particular subjectivity or agency or privacy but rather ones body practices were determined by where one happened to be placed in that power continuum. According to King in a pederastic order (courtier society) both male and female subjects presented themselves as objects for the Kings gaze in hopes of gaining favor. Since a pederastic society is one where status is everything masculinity per se was not yet the marker of privacy, subjectivity and autonomy that later epochs would construe it to be.

Many historians mark the long eighteenth century as the moment when two things emerged: privacy and heteronormative sexuality. (Many Renaissance scholars would argue that these things existed long before the long eighteenth century). The key argument of Kings book, however, is that "privacy", "sexuality" and "gender" (including notions of interiority, masculinity, feminininity, and the companionate marriage) emerge in resistance to courtly pederastic practices. In Kings account these things all arise as one emergent historical regime defines itself against another residual one.

The most prominent history of the rise of the middle class in early modern England is Jurgen Habermas's. King finds Habermas's widely accepted account whereby (mostly male) subjects become aware of themselves as newly autonomous subjects while reading novels in private to be suspect. King finds that Habermas's account tends to assume that reading practices allow men and women to reflect upon an already existent heterosexual subjectivity. King, on the other hand, sees subjectivity as an effect created and determined by new market relations. This is a key difference between Habermas and King because King, after Butler, believes men and women do not simply read to reflect upon an already existent heterosexual subjectivity but that reading practices, body practices, cultural practices etc...are constitutive acts.

Habermas assumes a sameness and consistency in all male desire throughout history and he assumes that all male desire is always already heterosexual and thus Habermas fails to read gender and gendered notions of privacy as historically constituted categories. Habermas also fails to account for the fact that a diverse population of emergent male and female subjectivities may respond to the same historical conditions and each other in vastly different ways. Kings takes into consideration both residual and emergent gender differentials and so his account allows for much more subtle and nuanced (and much more interesting) readings of seventeenth and eighteenth century texts and the residual and emergent subjectivities that they describe.

It is to the theatre (instead of the novel, Habermas's form of choice) that King looks for evidence of an ongoing attempt to produce/evolve/negotiate/regulate/disrupt/enforce notions of subjectivity (ie gender practices, gendered notions of privacy); it is also to the theatre that King looks for the political causes/implications of these new practices.

A fascinating book.

This is an excellent resource for both advanced beginners and experienced reseachers. Well organized, conversational, and very factual. Specific strategies for solving a variety of research challenges are developed and illustrated. The authors want the researcher to be able to locate the specific piece of Irish soil where the ancestor lived.

Betit and Radford do not attempt to address every record type or resource, nor does this work replace the standard reference works of Mitchell, Ryan, etc. It is not Irish county specific, nor is Argentine emigration addressed. What they have done very well is present the material in such a way that can enable the serious researcher, whatever the experience level, to get arms around a complex subject.

As you may surmise, I definitely recommend this book. Good luck and have fun.

A Genealogist's Guide To Discovering Your Irish Ancestors was specifically designed and written for the aspiring genealogist seeking guidelines for determining an Irish ancestor's place of origin. Dwight Radford and Kyle Betit effectively collaborate to present sound advice for researching Irish records both domestically and overseas; basic strategies essential to successful Irish research; special advice about tracing Scots-Irish ancestors; practical advice for accessing Irish cemeteries, land, church, estate, census, and military records; how to access civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths, as well as emigration lists; sources and strategies for researching Irish ancestors who settled in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England, Scotland, Wales, and the Caribbean, as well as timely information on Internet resources and favorite sites on the World Wide Web. Highly recommended for personal and community library genealogical research reference collections, A Genealogist's Guide To Discovering Your Irish Ancestors offers both the novice and the experienced genealogist with everything necessary to trace and record their family's Irish history.

After all that's been written about Lafayette, this book was a complete surprise. It added much to read of his wife's devotion and abilities and their lifelong relationship. It also places them in history, and by reading their letters, you are introduced to them directly. This book is not only entertaining but scholarly. Should be in every college library.

After reading both Unger and Kramer on the astounding life of General Lafayette, I was very curious about his wife. This book of letters and history concerning her life of privilege and partnership is a complement to what most people know about her famous husband. Both the American and French Revolutions were pivotal in their life together of sharing their wealth to the very end. Adrienne generously gave the peasants working her land the best circumstances of the day, while Lafayette at age 18 bought and outfitted a ship to help the colonies win freedom. Three daughters and a son were born while the General was going back and forth across the Atlantic to muster more help from the French for the new nation. Their only son was named George Washington Lafayette and he escaped being imprisoned due to his mother's clever arrangement. Before she joined her husband in prison voluntarily, she snuck her son out of France to be raised for several years by Martha and George Washington. Lafayette's two daughters also joined their father in prison. When Lafayette was not allowed to enter France, his wife pursued their family interests in war torn Paris and environs. She regained La Grange for Lafayette's retirement. He survived Adrienne by almost 30 years at this lovely chateaux and never remarried. She died at 50 due to her illness contracted at the prison where she decided to join her beloved husband. Many relatives were guillotined, so Adrienne arranged their burial site at Picpus Cemetery to be close to the thousands dumped in a mass grave. An American flag flys over their grave for they were both truely "Partners in Liberty's Cause." Lafayette took a triumphal tour of all the United States and returned to France with American soil to spread over their graves. Both equal partners and generous souls.

Professor Robert Wohl examines the phenomenon of the development of the generational history as applied to the study of the "generation of 1914" in five major European countries - France, Germany, Britain, Spain and Italy.

The generation of "wanderers between two worlds", devastated, redeemed and then lost in the Great War. This was not a unified collection of people, but really three waves with only a few years apart - those which came to 1914 with a sense of duty, values and purpose, those 17 year olds who only a few years younger did not take time to mature and were thrust head on to the doom of Verdun, and lastly those who were prepared to the fact that their lifes will be lost, but did not have time to serve when the war ended in 1918, but were marked by it for the rest of their lifes. How different this experience must've been, and how intimately and delicately things intervined to create a common thrust of the generation of the war. Wohl explores those experiences from phylosophical, philological, economical, religious and political perspective. Althought the book is packed with footnotes, anotations and hundereds of names, it reads in a very fluid fashion.

Wohl does an excellent job reworking the idea of 'generational history' in the context of the Great War. With a study of France, Germany, England, Spain and Italy, Wohl looks at the ways in which generations involve themselves in society. What is striking about this book is the fact that Wohl has chosen to situate it in the context of the very confusing lead-up to the First World War. Some general socio-political history, but really an excellent tool for understanding what it meant to be young in 5 different and important countries of Europe. If you are looking to get a handle on what it meant to be of the war generation, their history and unfortunate fate, then this is an absolute must-read. On the whole, remarkably readable, although it does get a bit heavy in philosophy as well. All in all, well worth the effort!

This is a very well researched book using the rich Genoese archives as well as material from other Italian collections. The subject, policy and power in Genoa, provides a good comparison with the more fully covered Venetian republic. It is a good contribution to the complex world of the Mediterranean in the Early Modern period.

There are many histories of Florence and Venice, but far fewer of Genoa. Genoa And The Sea: Policy And Power In An Early Modern Maritime Republic 1559-1684 is the story of one of Italy's great cities along the Mediterranean coast, and its transformation from a maritime republic into one of Europe's most crucial financial centers. When Spanish prosperity began to wane, Genoa, whose trade and prosperity had been closely linked with Spain, had to reinvent itself to continue its prosperity. A critical key to Genoa's success was a free-port policy that spurred trade and made it especially inviting to merchants. A thoroughly researched, scholarly scrutiny of a changing economic era as reflected in a bustling and complex metropolis.

The usual men-at-arms quality and concise coverage of all facets of the topic. This second title on the armies of Medieval Germany is illustrated by the late Angus McBride and reveals some of the bizarre costumes and armor decor of the knights and mercenaries of this period.

The usual good basic coverage by Osprey, covering the Holy Roman Empire. Wars were frequent, between principates, towns and cities, leagues, robber barons, religious groups. It's no wonder that Germany would be the site of some of the bloodiest campaigns during the later Thirty Years' War. There is also an excellent section on the Hussites and their unique method of fighting the Empire. There is even a halfway decent map in this one! The excellent color plates by Angus Mcbride start with chainmail and end with full gothic plate armor.

I have read this story to my third graders for the past few years and they absolutely love it. This is a great story for March. Use as an introduction to the folklore of leprechauns. This story keeps my students' attention until the last page.

The Gift is fantastic! While reading this book, my fourth grade students sometimes roll on the floor in fits of laughter and sometimes sit quietly with eyes glistening. It is beautifully written with an important message about family, love, and roots. Unfortunately, the original art in it is GROTESQUE, probably to blame for its being removed from print. I BEG A PUBLISHER TO GET IT BACK IN PRINT--without illustrations!! I KNOW it will be a big seller!

What a wonderful book this is! Conlon's voice is real...her character are people, living, loving, despairing, and making the best of it all.

Every single one of them rings a bell and the honesty is refreshing and true. They are a group of real friends who know when to tell the truth and when to think over telling the truth. Everyone takes responsibility for who they are and they accept, support, and make allowances.

This is what it's all about.

Best novel I read since Charming Billy. Had trouble putting it down, it gripped me immediately and does s fine job of increasing conflict up to the very last chapter. Story told with letters and an occasional chapter devoted to a single character providing his/her background from childhood on. Well written, characters developed in full. Read the book from our library - it was published in Ireland - and purchased a copy to send to a daughter who will loan it to others. Wonderful story - or stories really.

This is a fine introduction to the problems of 1688/89. The discussion of quite contentious issues is admirably judicious, and Miller is very sensitive to the long-term implications of the events he describes. In addition, Miller provides a very strong collection of supporting documents: while each of the "Seminar Series" includes some primary sources, this is one of the best collections in the series. 1688 is a crucial event in political history, and Miller provides an excellent way to begin a study of the subject.

This is the best short introduction to England's 1688 revolution and the consequences that flowed from it. It is an updated version of an earlier edition, and it pays greater attention than its predecessor to the revolution in England's public finances that stemmed from 1688. It also has new material on Scotland and Ireland. The choice of original documents to accompany the text is excellent.