Ireland Books

Can anyone tell me if they know of a web site for matt talbot? thanks - Shamrok47@aol.com

Mary Purcell's touching and well written biography of Venerable Matt Talbot, the Dublin blue-collar workman, whose slavery to drink and unquenchable and relentless addiction robbed a large part of his childhood and early adulthood, is a striking story of one man's battle against his demons--the plaguing obsession for alcoholic consumption. While at his first job at a bottling store, he learned to "put away" liquor to such an excess that by the age of thirteen, he was considered a chronic alcoholic, with no hope whatsoever for any type of recovery. At the age of twenty-eight, he had a profound conversion experience that forever altered his life, whereby God, Christ Jesus, the Holy Spirit and Mary, the Virgin Mother, became the epicenter of his whole life. But up till that intense moment, drink and how to go about getting it-even if it was by criminal means-was the all engrossing fixation that took over his soul. Not even his family, friends, work, self-respect nor his own health could minutely penetrate into his gloomy obstinacy and cruel recklessness. He was indifferent and unyielding about changing any facet of himself for the better, not caring one iota how his behavior and actions wounded those around him, for his disease was a combination of genetics and emotional distress. One was compounded with the other, locked together in a physical and mental war to destroy one who did not know where or how to turn in order to combat the spiritual and psychological decimation that was occurring from within.

Matt Talbot always had a distant yet respectful relationship with religion, but he had a greater bond with drink and anyone and anything associated with it. Oftentimes, when finishing up work at the docks or the yards, Matt and his buddies would head to the bars to get thoroughly tanked. To do so, he would often borrow money and offer empty promises to repay the debt. Or worse, he would beat up a drifter, as he did on one particular occasion, stealing his fiddle and pawning it for cash to be used for drink. He also sold his own shoes in the dead of winter-again-for drink alone. But more often than not, her got temporary "loans" from those around him, until that was no longer acceptable. And on one particular evening, when waiting outside a bar for his friends to arrive, his mates blatantly shunned him so completely that burning shame brought him down to the pits where nothing could revive him or so he thought, until he turned to "Him who does not fail."--page 60. After that experience and others like them, he knew humility and understood sin in its acute theological essence without having the book knowledge as a priest or theologian might. He had the life experience of it, and that goes way beyond any type of book learning. In 1882, at a church in Clonliffe, he took the abstinence pledge after his confession, and though he struggled bitterly, falling little by little, his evenings at various bars were replaced by evenings in quite reflections at various churches doing the rosary or trying to understand and assimilate scriptural truths into his recovery, for though he was practically illiterate, his conversion and openness to God's grace gave him the committed perseverance required to be the type of man that nobody thought possible.

When Matt Talbot took the pledge of sobriety in 1882, he renewed it three months later, then eight months, until he took it for life, remaining clean for the balance of his forty-one years of life. But it was what he did with that gift of life which God gave him that was so arresting. Always one of the guys, he led the life of the conconsummate laborer, the best of the best; he was often cited by his foreman to take the lead for the others to emulate. In his private life, however, he worked diligently and with a pure heart to bond ever deeper to God, through His Son and the Blessed Virgin. He practiced deep acts of mortifications: fasting, praying, serving others, trying to help alcoholics who were in his same shoes, long before Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) ever emerged. He exercised his conversion by secretly wearing chains around his body, otherwise known as Slavery to Mary. And though he was never rich or truly healthy, whatever money he had, he always denied himself and gave to the less fortunate, for his miracle was his liberation from the alcohol that he wrongly believed was on par with oxygen itself for his mere survival. This was his way to give back to a Father who only wanted the best for his child. What the Matt Talbot story illustrates is that no sin-no matter how demeaning or gross or horrific or extremely overwhelming-is overpowering enough that Christ Jesus, God, can't handle it, one needs only to meet Them half way in the struggle. And the gift will most certainly be made evident.

Mary Purcell's top-notch biography of Matt Talbot is without a doubt the definitive book on this little known man's holy life. Not only are his stuggles exhaustively explored with intelligent depth but so too are his times, his immediate environment and why alcoholism was so prevalent in nineteenth century Ireland. Poverty, lack of work and various other negative social issues were the causes and effects as to why so many "Matt Talbots" seemed to sprout up with a drink offering in one hand and a "screw this" mentality in the other. It is a book that reads not simply as a biography, but it reads as a fascinating chronicle of a country with its yo-yo-like ups and downs, economically, socially and politically. But with all that aside, it had-as it still does-its Catholic faith firmly held in tact, lifting and encouraging the downtrodden and those less so to look upward when it was, and sometimes is, easier to look down. Matt Talbot's story is a shining example, a future Catholic Saint whose witness has much to teach us.

Maura has a difficult life,growing up in war times and helping to take care of her severely retarded sister(who it turns out has a pure soul).She was also a twin,left twin-less after birth,like Elvis Presley was.Her twin was named Angela.One day Maura meets a girl who looks enough like her to be a twin,except that she is flawless without scars and stuff like that.Her name is Angela.Turns out she is an angel,and she has come to help Maura in all she does,and the longer she stays the more human she becomes.But the day comes that Angela must leave,in a human and a noble way.

Lynne Reid Banks is a unique author.A particularly good line was Angela's, "Our souls are the same" when speaking of males and females.We live in a twisted MArs and Venus,scientific mumbo-jumbo world,so thank you Lynne,for letting Angela say it so simply , Our souls are made the same.
We need more minds like Lynne Reid Banks.

Maura's Angel is a wonderful and unpredictable. The angel"Angela" is beautifully portrayed and the author did a fine job in Angela's role as a family member.I highly recomend this story to anyone.

I received this book as a Christmas gift and use it regulary. Not only are the recipes wonderful, but so are the photos. You get a lot of history about the dishes, where they originated, etc. I have made a lot of the recipes in the book and have not had one disappointment. It's Irish cooking at it's best. I would recommend this cook book to anyone who loves to cook and enjoy's a good Irish meal. Two of my favorites are the Dingle Pie (spiced lamb pie) and Beef and Stout. Hearty meals, easy, delicious. Enjoy!

`Myrtle Allen's Cooking at Ballymaloe House' by Myrtle Allen is a really great collection of typically Irish recipes from a very personal point of view. In a sense, this book has as much or more in common with the great Savannah family restaurant book ` Mrs. Wilkes' Boardinghouse Cookbook' than it does with the average collection of Irish recipes. Not only are both books about local restaurant / hotels with a national reputation, they are also both books of incredibly simple recipes.

On the matter of the personal material, Myrtle Allen's book is far superior than the volume done in Mrs. Wilkes' name, since we are certain that all the anecdotes are first person memories, written by Ms. Allen herself.

The appearance of this book may give one the impression that it is not much more than a book length advertisment for the restaurant and Inn created by Ms. Allen and her husband and enhanced with the cooking school started by her daughter-in-law, Darina Allen and son, Tim Allen. Having seen a few such books, I can assure you it is not such a book. The extent to which it invites you to want to visit Ballymaloe House in County Cork is based entirely on a genuine feeling of dedication to hospitality, culinary arts, and natural attraction of the Irish landscape.

Not that Ballymaloe House needs much promotion. It is easily the best known rural hospitality hot spot in Ireland. I have seen Darina Allen on at least two different Food Network shows plus prominent mentions in `Martha Stewart Living'. So, it is the book which benefits from the preexisting reputation of the Inn, restaurant, and cooking school rather than the other way around.

Reading this book gives me the same kind of epithanies I experienced when I visited Germany and discovered that in the land which bred the dachshund dog, it was the long haired variety which was much more common on the streets in the Rhineland than the far more practical short haired variety which would have been more suitable for its original use as a badger hunter. My epithany with this book is the fact that contrary to conventional wisdom in the United States, it is not white flour soda bread which is the traditional Irish bread, but a brown (whole wheat) soda bread which is actually commonly served in Ireland, at least in Cork and at Ballymaloe restaurant(s).

For a book retailing for $27.50 with an advertised 100 recipes, this is an exceptionally well designed and photographed book. Of course, photogenetic Ireland has a lot to do with this, but the book takes full advantage of the Emerald Isle's photo opps.

Returning to the comparison with Mrs. Wilkes' book on her Savannah establishment, the recipes in this book and that are all remarkably simple, but touch some very interesting territory in their simplicity. The first little delight is the recipe for a `tomato ring', moulded from a variation on a tomato juice recipe, by adding gelatin and leaving out water and olive oil. There may be some recipes which do involve some unfamiliar procedures such as that very French technique of making a garnish of hard boiled egg yolks by pushing them through a strainer. This may strike one as tedious, until you so it once or twice and appreciate the great effect it has on the dish and your diners' appreciation of the dish. So, while everything here is simple, there may be a few things which do not strike you as easy or familiar.

Sometimes, the titles for some recipes may be misleading to our American eyes, as with the recipe for `billy's french dressing' which is much more like a true French vinaigrette than it is like that mysteriously salmon colored preparation we knew so well in the supermarket. And yet, it has its own distinctly Irish touches, including watercress, which is actually the original shamrock, displaced later by clover.

I am impressed with page after page of really simple recipes, most with relatively few ingredients and simple preparation steps. The average American amateur cook may find a few ingredients which are hard to find at the local megamart, such as lovage or nettles. There are also a few vaguely inexact expressions of ingredient types, such as `mild wine vinegar'. This is ambiguous on two counts. First, does it mean a mild taste? Second, does it mean low acidity? If the latter, then the very best may be rice wine vinegar. White wine vinegar would be a clear mistake, as its acidity is higher than red wine vinegar, although it may be misconstrued, by being light in color, as being milder than red wine vinegar.

But, I am happy to say all measurements have been made in U.S. friendly terms. Everything is just as exact as it has to be, but no more.

In my search for the very best Irish cookbook, this one ranks high among those I have seen already. You will not be disappointed if you pick this book to represent Ireland in a working collection of international cookbooks.

The book was mentioned on the Anglo-Saxon Heathenry email list (I am a member). I ordered it based on the initial review by another member. My thought and that of many is that it should be a book that should set next to the Poetic Edda (in importance). The information is very well formated. It is easy to read and understand. The joke was passed around that now we could get rid of Bauschatz. If you be an Anglo-phile or Asa-tru this is a very good book. I cannot reccomend more highly.

Focusing on the Anglo-Saxon institution of the mead-hall, the author leads us to a view of what may have been a basic building block of Germanic culture.

While culling his evidence primarily from the wealth of A/S literature (which he translates himself), Pollington enhances his material with data derived from archeological finds. The accuracy of his presentation sets his book squarely in the history/anthropology section of one's library.

The book is an exploration of what these early Anglo-Saxon people were like and how the mead-hall was a reflection of their society. The book explains a Germanic culture and worldview in simple, concise and elegant terms with easily followed arguments. This is added to by a pleasing writing style.

Few books of late have left me feeling my time was so well spent after the reading.

In this exquisitely written book, you get the history of thirteen generations of a family who brought Western Europe out of the cultural darkness of their time, the city of Florence to the pinnacle of its glory, and the art of masters like Michelangelo and Botticelli to the world.
Young starts his Prologue with: "In the 5th century storm upon storm out of the dark North swept away in a great deluge of barbarism all the civilization of the western half of the Roman Empire", and lays the foundation for how the Medici came to power in the 15th century, a power that lasted nearly 350 years.

There are chapters on the palaces, the art, and biographies of the most prominent members of the family, starting with Giovanni di Ricci (1360-1428), and ending with Anna Maria Ludovica (1667-1743). The longest of the histories is on Catherine de Medici, with all its fascinating intrigue, and my favorite is the chapter on Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492), which also includes the short life of his brother Giuliano (1453-1478).

This has been a cherished book since childhood, when I loved it for its black and white illustrations; most of them are sublime portraits by artists like Bronzino and Raphael, and I fell in love with Botticelli's rendition of the above-mentioned Giuliano, mesmerized by the beauty of this painting (Plate VI). Michelangelo sculpted Giuliano for his tomb (Plate XXV), posed gracefully seated, wearing a breastplate, and also used his likeness for the famous statue of David. There is a difference in how Giuliano is represented by these two masters, but historians have noted that Michelangelo's interpretation is most like its subject.
It has copious notes, a wonderful fold-out Genealogical Tree, and a list of Authorities Consulted. For anyone interested in this era of history and the extraordinary Medici family, this book, though written many decades ago, tells its story in a fluid and riveting style, and is great reading.

What Young has written is two dozen interesting and relavent biographies that takes place in some of the more interesting times and places in history, remarkably tied together through a single family. He does not delve deeply into anything but art, and yet he has not writen one of those history books of everything at everytime that teach you nothing. Now note that this book is very long and has chapters that might be worth skipping (his descriptions of paintings that you can't see), but if you want to at least be introduced to the dissolution of the catholic church, the growth of objective thinking, the reformation, the rise of monarchies and standing armies, the birth of scientific thought, some really interesting characters, and, more importantly, how they all tie together, than I can not recommend this book highly enough.

The book is a brief history of medieval Ireland. It covers the times from the prehistoric times to the fifteenth century. However, brief does not mean superficial. The author chooses some subjects he is interested in and discusses them trying to be impartial - from many different points of view. He does not try to describe the past in detail, but rather to point out the most important moments, problems and aspects in Irish history. Richter also poses some questions significant from the point of view of a contemporary person some of which remain open.
The book is suitable for beginners as it is quite short and written in a comprehensible way as well as for people truly interested in the matter thanks to reliable bibliography record and references. It helps to understand the unusual political organization and the complicated and quite uncommon social structure of the Island in the middle ages. Obviously, history of medieval Ireland was greatly determined by the history of church, that is why the book deals mainly with the church's history, which was not less interesting in Ireland than political history. It is a very good book for a great start.

The book is a brief history of medieval Ireland. It covers the times from the prehistoric times to the fifteenth century. However, brief does not mean superficial. The author chooses some subjects he is interested in and discusses them trying to be impartial - from many different points of view. He does not try to describe the past in detail, but rather to point out the most important moments, problems and aspects in Irish history. Richter also poses some questions significant from the point of view of a contemporary person some of which remain open.
The book is suitable for beginners as it is quite short and written in a comprehensible way as well as for people truly interested in the matter thanks to reliable bibliography record and references. It helps to understand the unusual political organization and the complicated and quite uncommon social structure of the Island in the middle ages. Obviously, history of medieval Ireland was greatly determined by the history of church, that is why the book deals mainly with the church's history, which was not less interesting in Ireland than political history. It is a very good book for a great start.

Wonderfully and entertainingly written history of ideas based on personalities and events of the Middle Ages. Amazing parallels with the world condition today, may be drawn. Read it.

Norman Cantor's book is a fascinating collection of a very diverse and pivotal period in history. The Middle Ages, for Cantor, extend from the year 312 (the advent of the first Christian Roman Emperor, signaling in many respects the end of the Classical Age) to the year 1517, the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation, another key paradigm shift in the world. This is reader largely of pieces contemporary for the Middle Ages - there is some commentary provided, but the bulk of the task of presenting the Middle Ages rests upon the texts themselves, most translated anew into English by Cantor and other scholars.

This is also a Western civilisation reader - the Middle Ages is of a time as a well as of a place. The geography is Western Europe, from Ireland to Germany, from Scotland and Scandanavia to Italy and Spain. This was the land of Latin Catholicism, pollinated occasionally by Islamic culture from the south and Byzantine Christianity from the east, but largely undisturbed in its development. This culture represents a system of ideas political, religious and otherwise that formed much of the basis for modern Western culture, whose dominance in the world today is, for better or worse, unmistakable.

Cantor's anthology of 100 key texts is meant to simply the task of determining what is worthwhile reading from this period. Primary texts from the Middle Ages, so defined as comprising more than a thousand years, would include literally thousands of volumes - the output of writers such as Augustine alone could take a lifetime to read. Cantor arranges key texts topically, according to certain classifications - Nobility (including the primary families of the period, a sort of Social Register of royal and landed persons who controlled most of what would be considered state power), Church (the hierarchy and the overall institution), and the Middle Class (yes, there was a Middle Class, both urban and rural, that included knights, gentry, artisans and the like). Taking these classifications, Cantor arranges first texts that show them in as isolated a form as possible, then looks at the ways they interact with each other. The final portions of the text include works that look at problems and crises, and ends with documents of resolution, pacification and incorporation.

This is no mere chronology of texts - the emphasis here is on developing the patterns of society over time in the different strata. Literary works utilised include Beowulf, the Song of Roland, El Cid, the works of Dante, Chaucer, and Malory. Church writers from Augustine, Anselm, Bernard and Aquinas are combined with political writings from those such as Petrarch, Erasmus, and various anonymous documents and letters.

There are some real stunning pieces here - Bernard Gui's Inquisitor's Manual, Maimonides' reflections on Christianity (and one of his radical followers trying to explain why Jewish sex is preferable to Christian sex - something that must be read to be believed!), an account of the murder of Thomas Becket, and more.

Take and read!

When I first purchased this book through a mail order book club I was very dubious about ever reading it. It looked very uninteresting. But like the saying goes you can't judge a book by it's cover! And it's true this book has introduced me to so many other medieval authors that it's impossible to count them all. If it had not been for Norman Cantor I would have lost out on a lot of good Medeival reading! Thanks Mr. Cantor.

Matt Matsuda's uncanny historical imagination has achieved something no modern historian, French or foreign has been able to do: an analysis not only of the key moments of France's modern history, but also their hold on the popular imagination. He seems to realise that there can't be peace this year

From the outset, the reader of Matt Matsuda's The Memory of the Modern notes a departure from traditional historical texts. Matsuda begins his study of memory with a powerful set of images which serve to illicit historical memories, and set the stage for his foray into the cultural manifestations of memory in France at the fin de siecle. Matsuda calls his approach a general history owing to the familiar topics of politics, economics, cultural and social developments, and by limiting his focus to images from the Paris Commune of 1870 to the outbreak of continental war in 1914. The novelty of Matsuda's work stems from the modernistic framework of memory which the author uses to adeptly weave together the many disparate locus of memory and history into a coherent narrative. From monuments to mnemonic devices, from the Tango to scientific testimony, from the cinema to the stock market trading floor, Matsuda traverses the cultural landscape of late nineteenth-century France. This calvalcade of diverse memories presented by the author challenges traditional history by obviating the use of a sequential narrative.

Starting from Braudel's call for histoire totale, through Yates, Bergson, Nora and others, Matsuda argues for the centrality of memory in history. For Matsuda, memory in education is revealed when "a child pronouncing Latin grammer manifested the living soul of the ancients by stirring up the timeless power of language," while memory and criminality evinces itself as "an atavistic criminal, a living prehistoric relic, imprinted in his body with the savage traits of his ancestors." Even the Tango, when viewed through the prism of memory history, demonstrates that " a fashionable dance [can be regarded] as both glittering entertainment and a pagan rite to the passions of the body...".

Armed with new terminology Matsuda next defines modernity and the apparent acceleration of memory and history. Technological innovations produced a cultural shift in memory and the perception of the past equal to the shift from oral to written traditions. Photographic and phonographic inventions "exteriorized" memory, challenging the perceived inviolable nature of time. In addition, technology and the new view of memory formed a novel role for history.

Positivism in history stressed the scientific approach to research and writing, empirical data, and the certainty of historical truth. The incorporation of memory into historical study invalidates the positivist formula for historians. Postmodernist histories in the same vein as Matsuda demonstrate (as he argues) that "history as a positivist or liberatory narrative gives way to a history of mnemonic traces...the past is not a truth upon which to build, but a truth sought." Viewed in such a manner, the individual images which Matsuda focuses upon each bolster his arguement for the re-historicization of memory while also standing alone as critical memory objects of the fin de siecle.

Thus the varied themes expounded upon by Matsuda, by the nature of his memory approach, fuse together to form a valued addition to the emerging field of memory history. The "constellation of memory places" charted by the author represents a step further in the evolution of this new historiography. The historian Patrick Hutton has argued that Matsuda's approach, as well as that of other memory specialists, "signifies a powerful reaffirmation of history's possibility as an art." If we accept this notion then perhaps we can also speculate on a future of hisoriography of a less dichotomous nature (battling between history as science or art) but rather a dialectical relationship--a reconciliation of science and art in the spirit of the Renaissance. For much in the same way Renaissance artists fused the new science of perspective with the aesthetics of art, history could benefit by integrating the critical and rational objectivity of science with the novel approach inherent in the art of memory.

Thank you to Celia Brown for her collection of poetry Mending the Skies. The reader gets a good idea of "mending" the body and the soul. The soft mists of Ireland run through Brown's poetry and her nursing background, too, is embedded in her words. I especially enjoy re-reading "Forget-me-nots." The poem lets the reader into a unique family, as all families are, and also provides an introduction to the nurse to be. A must read.

Celia Brown, in her first book of poetry, shows the Irish gift of using common words as if they were newly minted, leading us to a fresh reconsideration of their sound and meaning. When Brown writes of cows "knee deep in May with grassy June before them," or of a lake near her childhood home being "three hearts of water,/a stem of land afloat/in the tweed of fields," we know we are in the presence of a poet who can refresh our perception of the world. "Mending the Skies" takes us through Brown's life story, from childhood by Galway Bay, to nurse's training in England, to marriage and emigration to the U.S., where she now lives by another famous bay--Cape Cod. Her poems mingle an exquisite poetic sensibility with tough common sense and a sometimes bawdy sense of humor. To read them is to be left in no doubt that she belongs to the grand tradition of Irish poets.

This difficult-to-find personal history of Ireland's fight for freedom and its legendary leader is well worth searching for. Written by a man who was an intimate of Michael Collins and a trusted conspiratorial comrade in the struggle against England, it has fascinating details about the day-to-day operations of a guerrilla war and the nervewracking lifestyle of the on-the-run participants. Beaslai, although a close friend and admirer of Collins, nonetheless gives a relatively objective picture of the man and his leadership, and this account, more than any other I have read, reflects the perspective and immediacy of a real participant in the history-making events it recounts. This sets it apart and makes it a highly recommended read for anyone truly interested in Irish history.

Written in 1924, only two years after Collins' death, this two-volume biography is as enthralling and relevant as it was when first published. Beaslai actually owes his own life to Collins, who planned and carried out his jail-break. This fact however does not cloud his judgement of Collins. This is the authoritive biography of Collins. You can be sure that all of Collins' more recent biographers have a copy! Buy it!!!