Ireland Books

This is just a real though provoking book. If it's light reading you want, stick with the comics in the newpapers. If you want a book that that will make you think and learn - then this is a great choice. Also, the CreateSpace edition is physically attactive both inside and out, with an easy to read, clear typestyle and layout.
A classic.

A review of Carlyle's Past and Present written in Carlylese (he's much better at it than I am...)

This book could change the whole Western world, if only men would read it, and believe it! -We could have several Utopias springing up in North American and throughout Europe within the space of five years! So here you are. In this work, Carlyle criticizes the social, economic, and political arrangements in England of the 1840s. I will not bother to explain what those arrangements were; I will only say that his criticism is as relevant to us now as it was to the people of his own time. My friends, very simply put, then as now, we have 'parted company with the eternal inner Facts of this Universe, and followed the outer transient Appearances thereof...[we] have forgotten the right Inner True, and taken up with the Outer Sham-true.' Yes Carlyle's English is a bit strange, but try not to be distracted by outer appearances, that is his point! In many aspects of our Western life, we have forgotten what is true and at the heart of the matter, and taken up with superficial nonsense.

Let's begin with economics. In Carlyle's day, the Industrialists were trying their damnedest to figure out a way to make the production of cotton cheaper. This is a sham! Instead, figure out a way, with all your cotton cloth, to 'cover all the backs of England.' How like our present day Global Economists, wracking their brains trying to get the poor fools of the Third World to buy our products. Why don't they stop a moment and see if everyone at home is yet sufficiently provided for. Do your own fellow citizens need what you are producing, or have they enough of it, need they some other product which it is in your power to produce? And what is this of Advertising? Carlyle remembers a hat-maker who built a seven-foot hat of wood and plaster; wheeled it about the streets of London to attract customers to his shop. Does this improve the quality or utility of your hats, man, or does it only fool people into thinking that you have done honest work? I begin to think that more money is made in Advertising in these times of ours than in any other enterprise. What are our cities but places to tack up Billboards, to display Clothes in shop windows, to produce commercials for television, all to fool people into buying rubbish they don't need. Don't Advertise, Just Work!

Religion? Why all the silly ceremonies, the controversies, feuding between different sects. Do we need absurd ceremonies and idolatrous rituals to believe in a Divine Power? True Religion is 'Moral Conscience, Inner Light' 'All Religion [is] here to remind us, better or worse, of what we already know, better or worse, of the quite infinite difference between a Good man, and a Bad, to bid us love infinitely the one, abhor infinitely the other, to strive infinitely to be the one, and not the other.' A Religious man is he who makes his whole life an appeal to Heaven, to Divine Justice, to Goodness, and who cannot be happy if he do not always choose the right thing for his family, his country, his God and himself.

Politics? Why do we continue to elect Bill Slicktons and Tony Blears, vicious Garry Condits and brainless Bushes, when these rotten Governors have in their own souls nothing to govern by. They are play-actors, nothing more, and very poor ones at that. Behind the smile, the make-up, the $400 hair-cut lies only one thing: 'impudent dishonesty--brazen insensibility to lying and to making others lie' Look into the souls of such men and what will you see: 'a general grey twilight, looming with shapes of expediencies, parliamentary traditions, division lists [like opinion polls], election-funds, leading articles...' The true leader, on the other hand, is a hero: he wants none of our material rewards, fears none of our punishments, believes that there is such a thing as eternal justice, will stop at nothing until he has made life better, happier, more fruitful for his fellow citizens. How do we elect such a man, instead of another politician, that is, another professional liar, wood and plaster dummy? We as voters must cease to vote wrong! How is that to be accomplished? Well that is not so easily done. We must all awaken from this state of enchantment, says Carlyle, must begin to learn to distinguish just and unjust, admirable and despicable in our fellow men, and in ourselves. READ THE BOOK!!!

This is for sure a great book, if you have the ability to concentrate for more than five minutes, unlike the majority of the Herd, in mean people, of today. If your intrest lies in the substance of this book, read some other review, I'm only going to tell you that, the (1909) publication, stinks; the so called book, is more like a oversized magizine, and the print is about the size of a footnote in the bible.

Widely known is the lucid and acid historic sense of Thomas Carlyle. This is what you will find in this book. More accessible than the monumental 'Sartor Resartus', but at the same high level. I strongly recomend that book as a way to enter into the vivid world of Carlyle.

I have found this an amazing tool for tracing my ancestors. I found the County Parish maps pre-1832 a great help. This is a definate must for Genealogy buffs.

Contrary to the availablity information provided here, this book is not out of print.

It is an absolute MUST HAVE if you're doing UK genealogical research! It provides maps to the parish boundaries for each of the counties of England,Wales and now Scotland. Each county map showing parish boundaries for England and Wales is placed next to a historical map for that same county. This provides an excellent opportunity to locate parishes in a historical context.

The real gem of this book is the information on the location of parish records. For each parish, the extant dates of the records available for that parish are given as well as the location of where those records may be consulted.

An outstanding reference work for UK genealogy.

This book is well worth the price. I started using an older version at a local library, but really needed something for home use. So I ordered the 2003 version and am completely delighted. The newer version added an overall map of the UK at the beginning and has added Scotland. Each map is "pre-1832 parishes and a topographical map from James Bell's A New and Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1834". And for someone doing a lot of work in Yorkshire, they have it divided into the 3 regions, East Riding, West Riding and North Riding. The only thing I would like the next version to include is an index of every little town and village and what parish it is in. Probably would double the price and thickness of the book, but what a treasure that would be.

This book is a compendium of information about parish registersin England -- a vital resource if you are doing genealogical researchin the UK.

Gearoid O hAllmhurain is no stranger to any fan of Irish music. His is a household name among traditional fans all over both for his own concertina playing and his music history lectures. I first saw him in Ireland about 5 years ago giving a lecture on the Irish Famine. I was so pleased by what an easy and interesting introduction to the topic this book was that it became my Christmas stocking stuffer for lots of my friends. Both those who play and those who love to listen to the music.This new book was pretty light reading and yet the best introduction to Irish music in the context of powerful historical events, war, famine, colonalism, Michael Flattley and Lord of the Dance. It makes me long for a real full version from this author. Unlike Ciaran Carson's popular, Last Night's Fun, this book is substanative and educational, not just an entertaining jaunt through the musical pubs of one sessioneer.

Mr OhAllmhurain does a splendid job or recording the details of Irish musical history that have heretofore survived only through the oral recountings passed from generation to generation in Ireland's musical heartland of Clare.

As an American with a life-long love for Irish music - but short on real musical knowledge - I found this book a god-send. Like another reviewer I would like to see another book by Gearoid (However, I wish Irish people writing in English would not use the difficult Irish version of their names. I take it that Gearoid's name in English is good old Gerard O'Halloran, but I digress...) which treats the matters in more depth.

I was particularly impressed that the author, who obviously is highly qualified on the subject, does not fall into the trap of overwhelming us with academic lecturing and, most of all, is respectful to all shades of contribution in the living river of traditional Irish music. And a great river it is!

I read this book knowing little about Irish history and less about Irish traditional music. Having finished it I now know considerably more about both, but still don't know much about anything in any depth. This book is a wonderful primer, but it blows through several hundred years of history in 161 small pages. It is well written book and the connections made between historical events and the music that either recorded them lyrically or grew out of them (e.g., incorporation of various Scottish or Polish rhythms) are fascinating and done in a consistent manner.

This book is an excellent place to start in on this topic, but you'll finish wanting more.

I loved this book which was given to me as a gift. I've visited Poland nine times since 1972. Leonard Kniffel captures the communist and post-communist Poland very accurately. His observations are honest as he discusses the good and bad in present day Poland. Needless to say the good far outweighs the bad!

I, of Polish descent, thoroughly enjoyed reading this book about the author's trip to Poland to find his grandmother's family. I wish I could live there and meet the Polish people. His descriptive writing shows that he enjoyed his visit and the citizens. The Polish surnames may confuse non-Poles.

Leonard Kniffel grew up in Michigan with a Polish grandmother who immigrated as a young woman. This instantly resonated, as my grandmother also immigrated from Poland as a child, and many of his memories of large Polish family gatherings, Polish mass, and family life rung so true to my own. At twenty-five, I am finally embracing my Polish heritage, in no small part inspired by this book. Leonard lands in Nowe Miasto Lubawskie, the town near where his grandmother is born, and quickly makes a network of local friends: Adam, a local entrepreneur and his new landlord, the elegant and sensual Pani Wituchowska, with her memories of grandeur before the war, local journalists Ryszard and Grazyna, the mayor, and innumerable relatives that he discovers on his quest to trace his grandmother's roots in Sugajno. The touching narrative is filled with bittersweet images of modern Poland, of its Communist legacy and strong will to survive, fervent Catholicism, and the legacy of Jewish indifference: a good part of the novel traces the author's struggle to divine what happened to the headstones in the local Jewish cemeteries, and he is shocked by how the Polish Jewish history seems to have evaporated into thin air. Most importantly, he reconnects with his Polish roots in a visceral way, embracing Polish cuisine (hunting for wild mushrooms in forests with Adam's mother), culture, and storytelling. A wonderful tale of family, friendship, being a stranger in a strange land, and rediscovering the important things in life. Dziekuje bardzo!

When does a personal journey make for beautiful reading? When it tells a remarkable story in language that stimulates the very feelings that moved the author. Kniffel's journal is such a book, a model for any similar attempt. The story, though it happens to be about a modern Polish-American seeking lost family connections in Poland, is the universal one of a stranger's quest in a strange land. Its language is deftly lyrical, never too much for the situation, almost always on target, so that the "strangeness" is allowed to speak for itself. And to an American reader the particulars are wonderfully strange -from the coughing, stalling Maluch automobile the author uses in pursuit of back-country relatives, to the phallus-shaped mushrooms eagerly gathered to feed the American guest (the feeding is hilariously incessant). Kniffel's discovery of lost family is touching and remarkable in itself; but even more impressive is how, as a child in Michigan, he remembered almost every word about the old country spoken to him by his beloved mother and grandmother. Those words became keys with which Kniffel unlocked his lost world, and, it turns out, a missing part of himself.

The latest in the Ed Loy series has the Irish PI looking for a jockey who disappeared years before after holding back a favorite horse so it would lose. It brings him into the midst of deep dark secrets of a prominent horse-breeding and -racing family. Although there isn't enough information to even begin an investigation, such a lack doesn't seem to deter Loy.

Discovery of the first of several bodies opens the inquiry into the many mysteries of the Tyrell family. All this takes place beginning on Christmas Eve and leads up to the four-day Leopardstown Racecourse Christmas Festival. The story is set among the current and past Irish economic and social conditions, with observations on the people and the Catholic Church playing an important role. The plot involves, as usual, the sins of the fathers cast upon the children.

The drama is high, the writing solid. This third in the series is as gripping as its predecessors, and is highly recommended.

The Price of Blood is Declan Hughes' third thriller set in Dublin, Ireland. Hughes previous novels are The Wrong Kind of Blood, which won the Shamus Award for Best First PI novel, and The Color of Blood.

Private Investigator Ed Loy is hired by Father Vincent Tyrrell to find a missing jockey, Patrick Hutton. Taking the case is easy, but the clues are few. The only thing that Father Tyrrell can offer to Loy is a name-and that the jockey disappeared years ago. Not a good start for solving a missing person's case, and Loy would prefer to let it go. The problem is the money is just too good, and since Loy's bank account is depleted, he really must take the case.

During the investigation of another case, Loy discovers the body of a man who is linked to Father Tyrrell's brother F.X. Tyrell. That mystery leads to other clues, and as Loy usually does, he gets battered and bruised, but doesn't give up digging into the mystery. The trail finally leads to the four-day Leopardstown Racecourse Christmas Festival where Loy finds dangerous people and activities afoot.

I love that Loy is "everyman." and yet he has something that sets him apart from most. He's tenacious, thorough and oh so likeable. Hughes' The Price of Blood is fascinating. It's fast-paced, gives the readers some wonderful twists and speeds on to the conclusion.

If you like PI novels, check out The Price of Blood. I guarantee that you will go out and buy the first two. Hughes is a habit-a good habit.

Armchair Interviews says: Hughes' novels just keep getting better

In Dublin, Father Vincent Tyrrell hires private investigator Ed Loy to find missing jockey Patrick Hutton. The case is made complex by the fact that his client offers only a name and that Hutton disappeared about a decade ago. Loy wants to say forget it as he figures he has little chance of finding the man, but the fee is too good to ignore.

Loy knows he must tread the streets very carefully as the Halligan family plan to rough him and more because they hold him culpable for one of them residing behind bars. As he makes inquiries on another case involving a homicide that leads back to Father Vincent's brother affluent business mogul F.X. Tyrell, Loy soon finds himself investigating two other related homicides connected to the Tyrell family. Beaten severely and told to back off or else, Loy keeps digging until the trail takes him to the four-day Leopardstown Race-course Christmas Festival.

In his third appearance (see THE COLOR OF BLOOD and THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD) Loy does what he does best: gets tattered and threatened but keeps on ticking. The story line is fast-paced from the opening request and though filled with neat twists never slows down until the final altercation. Bruised, battered and beaten, Loy still conducts intelligent inquires whose link is F.X. Private investigative fans will enjoy Declan Hughes' strong Irish mystery.

Harriet Klausner

Irish playwright Declan Hughes's third private detective Ed Loy novel, THE PRICE OF BLOOD peers into the gritty sides of Dublin and families as Loy investigates the case of a missing jockey and a case of vandalism. In a suspense thriller with echoes of Greek tragedy set in modern life, Declan Hughes creates an innovative look into the darker sides of his characters and the underside of Irish horse racing. THE PRICE OF BLOOD is a suspense read full of local color from an Irish author who looks beyond the surface into societal changes and customs as well as into the shocking secrets hidden from plain view, secrets that when spoken can often lead to tragic consequences.

Father Vincent Tyrrell asks PI Ed Loy to look into a name, Patrick Hutton. The Catholic priest and horse racing devotee gives Ed Loy just the name without any other details, refusing to break the seal of confession. Now dying of cancer, the priest's conscience troubles him. Meanwhile, Ed Loy takes on a case, assisting Joe Leonard in catching vandals. As Ed Loy pursues the Leonard case, he discovers a body dumped, a body with some shocking details and a piece of paper that might just relate to his jockey case. When Ed looks closer into the history of Patrick Hutton, the body count increases. Each victim has 2 cryptic tattoos roughly engraved into their skin and certain other details in common which Ed discovers when he comes across a dumped body. While the papers claim the murders are the work of a serial killer, The Omega Man, Ed Loy knows that the clues and relationships just do not fit the serial killer scenario. His investigation of jockey Patrick Hutton takes him into the tumultuous world of Irish horse racing and the Tyrell family where passions run deep and secrets are hidden even deeper.

From the very beginning of THE PRICE OF BLOOD, Declan Hughes takes the reader into an intimate vision of Ireland. Declan Hughes sections the book by date into Advent, Christmas, and St. Stephen's Day, thereby creating a temporal structure that relies on the Catholic calendar and focuses on Father Vincent Tyrell`s world. His moral dilemma introduces this work of suspense, allowing the reader to catch both a glimpse at the depth of this character, as a man tortured by a secret he must keep and also as a compassionate man willing to stand out as he brings Tommy Owens into the fold of his church and protection despite the congregation's displeasure. From the very beginning, the reader feels Ed Loy's ties to his youth and his independence from the Dublin of his past through the interchanges with Father Tyrell. Through the descriptions of the Joe Leonard case, Declan Hughes, takes the reader into Ireland's past and present as characters once isolated from one another by economics, now live in close proximity. Those who once thought of semi-detached housing as low class now are limited to council housing. Now, downcast, Joe Leonard is determined to protect his corner. To Joe Leonard, Declan Hughes juxtaposes F.X. Tyrell, a man for whom horse racing has improved his status and station in life.

As suspense, THE PRICE OF BLOOD delves into the dark side of horse racing, purebreds, and relationships as passions and past histories collide. The closer Ed Loy gets to answering the puzzles, the more surprising twists he uncovers. As St. Stephen's Day approaches with the exciting climactic horse race, even the best laid plans cannot prepare the characters for the shocking conclusions still to come. As with a previous past case, when the culprit is finally revealed, the revelations elicit unexpected actions. Secrets haunt but brought to light, do they bring comfort? Declan Hughes' suspense stands out precisely because answers are not easy or simplistic. Through the depth of the character of Father Vincent Tyrell, Declan Hughes creates a magnificent sense of pathos in his suspense that makes THE PRICE OF BLOOD a unique suspense read.

Declan Hughes is a must read for drama enthusiasts (particularly tragedy lovers) and literature enthusiasts. Father Vincent Tyrell recalls to mind Graham Green's memorable characters while simultaneously upping the ante several notches. While reading THE PRICE OF BLOOD, literature lovers might call to mind OEDIPUS REX and Arthur Miller's DEATH OF A SALESMAN, not so much in terms of plot or characterization where there are both some similarities and differences, but more so for the brilliant way Declan Hughes deviates from these classics. Declan Hughes creates an innovative work of fiction that pays tribute to previous literary classics while all the while transforming them, adding new twists as he places his tale in the suspense genre. The author invigorates the suspense genre with a new vision that will delight, indeed haunt lovers of both suspense and drama.

If you are looking for a light happy suspense read or a quick serial killer whodunit that you can easily put aside with disinterest shortly after finishing it, this book may not be the best choice. If you want a suspense read that glosses over the ramifications of actions or the pain endured by characters, search elsewhere. If you are looking for a unique read and one that stands out from all the books out there, in either suspense or literature, THE PRICE OF BLOOD is brilliant! Although tragic, THE PRICE OF BLOOD is hauntingly innovative --- the kind of book one remembers for its uniqueness.

This is perhaps the most pleasurable "academic" history I have come across. Although it provides an extensive account of life in the Chesapeake through the lives and business dealings - and there are plenty of those enumerated - of the tenacious Carroll family, I was also struck by Ronald Hoffman's major theme of family continuity, of purpose driven by recollection and ambition that the Carrolls had in spades. The very tightly researched accounts of the family history in Ireland, and of all the other families like them in the chaos of the 17th century, is little short of astonishing. I'll admit to an enduring interest in Irish history, but this one illustrates why Carrolls and others left their broken aristocracy. That continuity touches on my own forebearers, one of whom was a first cousin of Charles Carroll of Carrollton's. She married another Irish immigrant Marylander and set out in 1796 to populate the then frontier in Kentucky with other Catholics, I am sure at direction of one of their neighbors in Upper Marlborough, MD, Fr. John Carroll, first Catholic bishop in America and also Charles' first cousin. A great read on many levels.

Ronald Hoffman is an excellent historian who has brought great knowledge of Chesapeake social and cultural history to this biographical work that places three generations of the Carroll family within their colonial context. It is a wonderful biography that gets the reader into the minds and lives of these three Charles Carroll's. But for me the best thing was the number of times it made me think, "Oh, that's how it was." I have read enough colonial history to know that there were lots of tenant laborers and not just slaves in the region, to know that Catholic Maryland quickly became Anglican Maryland, and to know that the Revolution was not just about ideas but also about social change. Ronald Hoffman's narrative, however, really brings these facts home. His book is not about any one of these issues in particular, but in telling the story of three generations of Carroll's in Maryland he brings home the greater circumstances of the colony better than many historians who have set out to make a case for one of the above arguments, or many of the other fascinating takes on early Chesapeake society contained in this highly readable book. I have not read any book lately that I enjoyed more.

Traditional patriotism demands that we believe that the founding fathers of America were all great democratic idealist. Although this may have been true for some, many others had no problem with the idea of an elite ruling class, so long as they were considered the elite. Thus the victory over England can be viewed as less of an American Democratic Revolution and more of a power transition from the English crown to the new American aristocracy.

A primary example of this American elite class was Maryland representative Charles Carroll of Carrollton. A signer of the American Declaration of Independence, Charles of Carrollton was a wealthy planter and businessman who became such not by his own doings but primarily through the inheritance and molding of his father, Charles Carroll of Annapolis. Ever mindful of his Irish and Catholic roots and the persecution therein by English aristocrats, the elder Charles did everything in his power to equip his son to fend off those who would attempt to cripple him politically and economically. In so doing, the elder Charles created a mindset of elitism within his son.

This irony is highlighted by Ronald Hoffman in his book, "Princes of Ireland, Planters of Europe," in which he examines the Carroll family and traces how a persecuted family from Ireland in 1500 came to be one of the prominent families in America by the time of the American Revolution

I was originally attracted to this book out of a simple curiosity about the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence (Charles Carroll outlived Adams and Jefferson by about six years, or about 56 years after 1776!). On a deeper level, I hoped to learn more about the kind of early capitalist that would be attracted to signing on to the American Revolution in general. What this book helped me discover was a family that had over time become focused, almost obsessed, with making a buck under fairly adverse circumstances (namely, continuing in their Roman Catholic faith that made it difficult for them to thrive, even in an enclave as seemingly sympathetic as colonial Maryland, with its relatively large Catholic population). But when the time came for this family to rise above its simple wealth building and to champion the cause of the Revolution, it did indeed rise to the occasion, however brief and painful the process might be. (Hoffman attends to both the private and public lives of the Carrolls.) The history of the Carrolls is a part of the history of the magic that was the American Revolution. It is not surprising that the book ends abruptly with the death of Charles Carroll's father and his wife, about 10 days apart from one another in 1782 (though there is a brief summing up of Carroll's remaining 50 years and the attention attracted by his death in 1832). The story is told, the dynasty pretty much complete.

What's the book like? At times it seems downright willfully prosaic, and the story proceeds much like a carefully written doctoral dissertation - all conclusions fully supported and made in as logical a context as possible, all contentions politically correct for our time. Hoffman's goal is of course to be scholarly and thorough, not to be entertaining or controversial. Thus the sweep of this history must emerge and coalesce in the mind of the reader. Leave being beaten over the head with the broader conclusions inherent in the narrative to more popularly written histories.

Suffice it to say, if you're a municipal library and you need to beef up your Revolutionary War material, this is a prime buy. If you're a true history buff, this would be an excellent choice to work into your reading list. It has the effect of immersing you into the spirit of the times and providing you with detail you could not have imagined you would find interesting (but you do). If you're a casual reader, just be advised - this is heavy stuff. It's not an easy read, but it is ultimately a rewarding one.

This was a great book! It gave me a real appreciation for how foreign the medieval way of thought is from current -- because of the printing press. If you've read Walter Ong's _Orality and Literacy_, this is similarly mind-blowing.

I will caution, however, that this is a very academic book. She spends a fair amount of time refuting people who disagreed with her. It is also designed for historians. I'm no dummy, but some stuff went over my head. (If you know the following phrases and people, you'll be fine: Plutarch, incunabula, Tridentine, Rabelais, Marlowe, the _Digest_, Cujas.)

I gave it five stars because it was definitely worth slogging through, but I wish I had gotten the abridged version instead.

No, Dr. E did not write in this book about the Internet at all but at least in pages 65-110, you can see the parallels. There is plenty here to chew on and yes, having both volumes together is a whopper but this is at the bare minimum a TOP 10 book for everyone in the Western world because it gets right to the heart of this reality we call "economics".

Excellent history and philosophy reading when you look at it from the right angle. It ranks up there with Drahos - Philosophy of IP, Kuhn's, Sorensen's thought experiments, Thoreau's selected journals, Dewey's how we think and Einstein's ideas and opinions.

We have come to forget that the introduction of the printing press by Gutenberg mattered, or we have come to assume that it directly led to the Protestant Reformation. Eisenstein wondered how true that was, and what other changes the press wrought in European society in the couple of hundred years after the press was introduced. Start with the concept of authorship--once books could be reproduced in quantity, authorship mattered. Then consider the question of alphabetization and indexing. Then think of what happens when travel writers describe native dress--people start believing the books and variations become more extreme to meet the printed word. That's just the beginning. Eisenstein's book is not just an incredible work, well written, about the effect on our culture of the printing press. It is also the sort of book that makes one realize how unimaginable and vast the influence of any invention can have on a society. This book is critical for media studies, history, printing, typography, just to better understand our own society, or for the pleasure of a good, thorough, read.

If you suspect that the Internet is changing our world in profound ways, this book will stir insights into how technology can rapidly transform nearly every aspect of a culture. Unlike most commentators on the Renaissance, who take for granted the fact that printing brought about great change, Eisenstein focuses on *how* technology triggered and accelerated dramatic change. She focuses especially on the role of exposure to new points of view.

For example, collaboration of printers, scholars and publishers in the first great publishing house, the Aldine Press, brought together people who previously had little knowledge of one anothers' world-views. In order to work together effectively, they were forced to see through one anothers' eyes. Indirect access to new viewpoints had an even broader impact. The ready availability of books allowed a genius such as Copernicus to study cosmology without devoting years of his life as a mendicant scholar. Eisenstein observes that the the movements of stars and planets hadn't changed; the newly available data were the opinions of previous cosmologists. For the first time in history, one could compare and contrast cosmologies in one's spare time, without sacrificing years to visit scattered libraries.

Although Eisenstein makes no attempt to compare early modern Europe with today's world, a reader who is familiar with today's technological changes can hardly help but draw parallels. Gutenberg, the technical purist who was repeatedly sued for refusing to ship his product, acted out the role of the prototypical Silicon Valley inventor suffering from "creeping elegance." Gutenberg's typography has rarely been equalled, but he died bankrupt, his invention owned by the "venture capitalists" who funded him. Meanwhile, Aldus Manutius persuaded compromise among printers (technologists) and church scholars (the publishing establishment). The Aldine Press expertly packaged information into books and catalogs that were easy to sell. Like Microsoft, the Aldine Press became a dramatic business success by delivering excellence in packaging of others' inventions, not by making technical breakthroughs.

Although Eisenstein does not focus greatly on the seat of power in early modern Europe, the Holy Roman Empire, the church clearly suffered the greatest losses of influence as a result of the distribution of new ideas. Eisenstein recalls the protests of Martin Luther to the Pope, saying that he had no idea how so many people obtained his theses so quickly. The Wittenberg Door appears as an early Web site, allowing anyone, including publishers, to seize ideas that previous could not have achieved wide distribution. Eisenstein's readers will surely wonder which institutions in today's world stand to lose influence and power as a result of easy access to a variety of points of view via the Internet.

It is 1921. Young Ben Sheridan, a job offer from a bank in his pocket, returns home to Jamestown, Rhode Island, to find a fire that threatens the town harbor and an accident that injures fire chief Arthur Sheridan, his father. When Arthur requires a blood transfusion, Ben provides it, only to have his father die of blood poisoning. Ben is shocked to learn that Arthur Sheridan was not his biological father. The discovery uproots everything Ben thought he knew about his life, and sends him on a journey to Ireland to find the truth about his heritage. The parish priest, Father Willoughby, arranges for his passage to Ireland and letters of introduction to Arthur's old friends. But Ben isn't even off the boat from America before he discovers he has been dropped into the middle of a civil war, one that will force him to make tough choices about the life he left behind in America and the perhaps very short life before him in Ireland.

Paul Watkins excells at setting a textured sense of place. "The Promise of Light" brings to life Narragansett Bay in the years between World War I and the Great Depression. His description of Jamestown and its inhabitants is as real as a handful of beach sand. He evokes the Irish Civil War between the British Black and Tans and the Irish Republican Army as the vicious, very local and personal fight it must have been. His protagonist, Ben Sheridan, is startingly real as a troubled young man on a quest for a long hidden truth across an ocean and a tangled battlefield.

Watkins' characters are each unique and with surprising depth for a short novel. Dialogue is life-like, spare, and honed to the requirements of the storyline. The storyline itself ebbs and flows, now briskly, now reflectively, towards Ben Sheridan's "promise of light."

This novel is highly recommended as an entertaining and atmospheric read, one that shows Watkins as a mature novelist on top of his game.

the story of a boy who is caught between who he is and where he belongs seems to be a theme in every one of watkin's books, however, this one in particular speaks volumes to me. along with the forger, i read this book about once a year.

Paul Watkins is not just the best young writer we have, he may well be our best living writer, period. His first book, Night Over Day Over Night, published when he was just 23, was nominated for the Booker Prize. Since then he has added a series of excellent novels and one brilliant memoir, Stand Before Your God, that have earned him the reputation of a modern Hemingway or Conrad. His work certainly warrants these lofty comparisons and his omission from Granta's Twenty Best Writers Under Forty casts a shadow on the whole list.

Promise of Light opens, in 1921, with Ben Sheridan taking a ferry back to his home in Jamestown, Rhode Island. He has just secured a long sought job in a bank and his whole future seems open before him. But by the end of the night, his fireman father will lie dead as the result of a blood transfusion from Ben, which reveals that Ben was not his son. In fulfillment of his "father's" dying wish, Ben takes his ashes back to Ireland, where he hopes to discover his real parents. But before he even reaches land, he is embroiled in the bloody Irish Rebellion, as it turns out that his father was a legendary IRA gunrunner who, like a figure out of myth, was expected to return one day.

Watkins brilliantly combines Ben's search for his true identity with rousing action sequences, indeed the final fifty pages of the book depict a running battle between Ben's band of IRA gunmen and the dread English Black and Tans as they race to the farmhouse where the man Ben now believes to be his father is holed up.

The comparisons of Watkins and Hemingway are based on both the settings of his novels (in wartime, on fishing boats, in Africa) and the clarity of his prose. Here he describes Ben's reaction to the death, in battle, of a lobsterman named Tarbox:

I knelt with the others, dew soaking through my trousers, and I tried to remember a prayer. But nothing came to mind, not even a song. All I could think of were Tarbox's bright-painted crab-pot floats, bobbing in the water off Lahinch. And now Mrs. Fuller's words sank into me, about whole generations dying out. I saw how it would be. Tarbox's wife would move away and their tin-roofed shack would fold back into the earth. There would be no children to inherit the land and keep the name alive. The faint scratches that Tarbox had left on the earth would be rubbed out by a year or two of wind and rain.

I had not liked him much. If he had lived and I'd gone back home again, I would not have remembered him kindly. But now I cried for Tarbox and for his wife, because I had been jealous of how much they were in love.

The reasons for comparison to Conrad are evident in his description of the brutal fanatic leader of the IRA cell that Ben joins up with:

I couldn't imagine a childhood for Clayton. I couldn't imagine him younger or older or any way except the way he was now. To me, Clayton had begun to make sense. He didn't try, like the others, to live as if the war could be forgotten from time to time in the dark-paneled walls of Gisby's pub or in front of a fire at night. Clayton lived in black and white. He saw no boundary to violence. The war never quit and his instincts for war never rested. he had no other instincts. Everything else had been put away in a warehouse in his mind. he claimed no friends or love of family because he could be hurt by people who hurt them.

Such are the men that Conrad warned us of, time and again.

The other thing that makes Watkins' work exceptional, is a moral core which seems increasingly rare in our society, never mind in our literature and culture in general. His characters recognize that their actions have consequences and behave as if they cared about those consequences. They are capable of making ethical judgments--a quality that seems to be disappearing elsewhere.

I urge anyone who is not familiar with the work of this great young author to remedy that situation post haste.

GRADE: A+

I wasn't really excited about the subject of the book, but I bought it anyway because I've loved everything else that I've read by this author. I could not put it down.
This book is so real, so true, that you feel like these characters might still be alive; like you could meet them and shake their hands and have a conversation with them. And better yet, Watkins gives his characters and stories a moral core, so much so that you start to admire them, forgetting that they are not real people.
Do yourself a favor and find out why so many people consider Paul Watkins to be the greatest writer of his generation. Start with his acclaimed memoir, "Stand Before your God", to find out about his growing up, then move on to his great novels, like this one.

The Question is, without doubt, the single best argument against torture under any circumstances. It is a brutally true and personal account of a man caught up under the circumstances beyond his control during the Algerian War of Independence. It was a time when the French, desperate to maintain control over Algeria, had allowed its army to use torture in order to obtain information about its main insurgent enemy, the FLN (Front Liberation Nationale). The author literally puts the reader into his shoes, and one can literally feel the pain of electric shock, the suffocating hell of water boarding, or the miserable mind warping experience of truth drugs.

In wars such as the current GWOT (Global War on Terror) as well as in Algeria, there is always the temptation by politicians to use acts like torture in order to gain an advantage over an insurgent enemy. However, make no mistake. Just as the revelations of torture had undermined the perceived legitimacy of the French cause in Algeria, the same danger also exist in today's struggle in the GWOT.

Regardless of one's opinion on the matter, one must read this simple book in order to gain an understanding of what a torture victim goes through. The book is beautifully written as well as brutally honest. One can easily read it in a day.

Finally, it is important to keep in mind that there is no politics in this book. It is just an account of the hard reality of man's inhumanity against man.

If you are interested in what exactly waterboarding is, and the physical and moral impact on victim and torturer, you need to read this book.

tHIS IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF EUROPEAN HYPOCRACY, LIBERTE, FRANTERNITE ET EQUALITE. THIS BOOKS REVEALS THAT THE ABOVE SOLOGAN IS FOR ONLY CERTAIN PEOPLE OF THE WORLD,BUT NOT FOR AFRICANS. ONCE, AGAIN THIS BOOK REVEALS THAT NOT ALL FRENCHMEN AGREED WITH THE DE GUALLE GOVERNMENT OFOPRESSION.ADDITIONALLY,IN READING THIS BOOK AND OTHERS OF THIS NATURE,SHOULD REINFORCED THE STOPPING OF TORTURE ADN NOT MATTER WHEN IT HAPPEND THERE SHOULD NOT BE A STATUE OF LIMITATION. PROSECUTION SHOULD MANDATORY AND THOSE GUILTY SHOULD BE HELD RESPONSIBLE.

I read _The Question_ when I was in high school, back in 1958 or 1959. It made a major impression on me, more than most of the books I was reading at the time. The subject is the use of torture in dealing with terrorism and the author did not sugarcoat the subject. He was fairly graphic about the techniques used. The book is short, less than 100 pages, but it gets the point across. What makes the book timely today is the combination of the publication of _The Battle of the Casbah_, two years ago, wherein one of the French Army's practioniners of torture tells his story for the first time and the fact that the United States is now engaged in fighting a war against terrorism. For those who believe that the issue of torture as an element in fighting terrorism has not been surfaced in the past, the fact is that for those who wanted to know, the information was available all along. As we ask ourselves about this interrogation "technique" it is good to go back and review what has been said in the past.

Many Americans can't understand how Germany developed a racial state in the midst of modernism. This book gives vivid insight into the mechanisms & development of fascism. The National Socialist Party didn't just happen. The machinery of the state developed under the right conditions with the help of many non-military individuals, including both professors & doctors.

Not only is this book interesting for its historical information, reading it enlightens the reader to more recent fascist development. After reading this book, you will never say it can't happen here.

This insightful text takes several perspectives in analysing the radical social engineering project known as National Socialism. Although not all of the Nazis' victims were racial 'undesirables,' all came under the boot in one way or another as a way of advancing that racial project. Wippermann and Burleigh have done an impressive job in exploring this theme, approaching it from Nazi policy to broad implementation, as well as looking at the refashioning of society by segments along Nazi lines.

The concept of the untranslatable _Volksgemeinschaft_ can be somewhat difficult to convey to students in our atomised and pluralised culture. Not only does this text provide "thick description" of this social construct, but it also supplies a useful framework for comparative analysis without resorting to useless relativising and hierarchising of suffering. Highly recommended as a classroom text for undergraduate level and above.

Techinically I was forced to read this book for a history cause I'm taking. However, instead of reading all the other source too, I read the whole thing instead of just the assignments for this book. If you have any interest in the Holocaust, this book is a must. The integration of documents and survivor's account gives the information alot of different perspective that really helps to better understand a situation that is so unimanigable.

This is an excellent book and I recommend it to anyone interested in the institutionalization of National Socialist racialism. However, I must disagree that Germany was unique in this. One has only to look around to see that the United States is pursuing similar social policies under the guise of "fairness" or "tolerance" as are all the Western democracies--which should tell you something about democracy.