Ireland Books

Paul Lay's informative text is a perfect accompaniment to Richard Turpin's stunning, lovely, full color, tour-de-force photographic excursion through the appealing beauty of Ireland's landscape, cities, architecture, and people. Enchanted Ireland is an outstanding compilation of Irish images and a pure celebration of the natural wonder and folk charm of a vibrant people in a land bustling with vigor and cultural legacy. Highly recommended!

Having just returned from a 2-week visit to Ireland I was eagerto get my hands on anything related to the places I saw. So, I took alook at several photography books on Ireland and was losing hope of finding the "right" one, when I started flipping through "Enchanted Ireland." I was stunned by the wonderful photographs, and the great range of both landscape and city/town pictures. There are also some beautful people pictures, including--to my astonishment--Paddy, an accordion player and resident of Inishmor, whom I saw on my trip to the Aran Islands. If you're looking for a wide range of photographs and a good idea of what parts of Ireland look like (and they're stunningly beautiful) then this is *the* book to have. You'll want to leave for Ireland tomorrow!

If you are interested in the life of Emma of Normandy, wife of King Canute, then this book will captivate you. It is a fascinating, contemporary look at the legendary events of 11th century England.

This is a detailed, fact-filled book on Queen Emma of the 11th century. It is a fascinating portrait of a queen who lived through a lot of tragedies. Not for the light reader, though.

Markus' treatment of the culture of early Christianity is fascinating. More than any other scholar I have read, he is adept at showing the broader significance of various parts of Early Christianity.

Markus traces the historic shifts which marked a transformation of the Christian movement, from the popular primitive church of the first centuries, into a great bulwark of the medieval social order. He shows how the Christian community slowly divided into three orders -- of lay people, the all-male clergy, and the celibate monastics. And then the question emerged as to which order ranked highest. At first, the lay people were most important, since they chose and supported all church leaders from among themselves. Later, professional clergymen established themselves as state-backed supervisors over the laity. But by early medieval times it was the celibate monks who emerged as the Christians of highest rank. With their isolation from the world and from sex, the monastics seemed holier than either the local clergy (who were still mainly married), or lay families. In both the West and East, bishops, patriarchs, and popes were increasingly drawn from the ranks of male monks. It was a momentous trend. Markus claims, "The ascetic take-over [roughly in the time of Pope Gregory the Great (590-604)] signals the end of ancient Christianity". (p. 17)

I think Markus does the church a service, helping us distinguish layers of Christian tradition as they were added, and to see how these differed from the original Jesus movement.

--author of "Different Visions of Love"

This book fills the gap that the Gulag Series is missing...The Personal Views..Much of the books on the gulag are scholarly estimates and observations, without the first hand eyewitness to the events. This book is created from exceprts from little heard of books about the Gulag published throughout its history, from the Time of The Great purge up To the Time when cold war tensions were "Loosening Up", when in fact the same hard conditions persisted...
The books writing quality as a whole is very good, the book is intresting and intriging to read, and also conveys deep details and vivid descriptions of the Gulag...Very much recommended to all readers.

"Enemies of the State" provides a riveting look into the slave-labor prisons of the Communist world during several decades of the 20th century. It brings history alive to a whole new generation of Americans who may be only vaguely aware of the oppression, torture and viciousness imposed on their countrymen by totalitarian leaders like Stalin, Mao, and Castro. The book contains 10 first-person accounts by people who spent years wrongfully imprisoned in slave-labor camps. Very much like the first-person accounts of Jews held in German concentration camps during the Holocaust, "Enemies of the State" also includes historical background and explanations of the political themes of the times. The book is factual and compelling for anyone over the age of 12. It is a great resource for high school or college students, and teachers and college professors. The general public will also find this book to be fascinating reading, although it is not for anyone with a weak stomach. The tortures and degradations described in the book are beyond imagination, but they are real and are presented in painful and vivid detail. Anyone with a love of history, however, will find this book to be an important addition to their library. I highly recommend it for youths and adults, and I especially encourage home schoolers to consider including this book in their studies.

Guy Gibson gives us much fine detail about his group and their work during the war (WWII). Some of the technical details of the raid on the German dams was censored from this book but I saw a program on TV a few years back showing the details of the backward spinning bomb in a barrel that would walk down the wall of the dam and had a hydrostatic fuse to ignite it at exactly the correct depth.

Very well written. A first hand account of history and an insite into a a leader of men of his time whose life was cut short.

This is the textbook you wish you'd had when you studied history in school. Maurice Keen presents a thouroughly researched and well thought out overview of the primary social and political events of England from the reign of Edward I to that of Richard III. He starts with the death of Alexander III of Scotland and the political crisis that ensued, leading England into the wars of Scottish independence. He analyzes the wars from an economic as well as a political and social perspective, and presents convincing arguments for why Edward II was an unsuccessful king and Edward III more effective. He examines the role of the church during the later middle ages and sets the stage for England's eventual reformation of the church in the Tudor era. The Hundred Years War is examined not in the details of its battles, but in its effect on English politics and society and how its cost changed the relationship between the king and English nobility. In every chapter Keen takes the reader through how the acts of the various rulers during this time period had a profound and lasting effect on all segments of English society, from the nobility to the clergy to the merchants to the peasants.

Although some of the economic arrangements are difficult to follow in places, at least for someone without a background in economics, Keen's prose is highly readable, grammatically correct and eloquent, and the chapters are divided into manageable and logical chunks. Keen's footnotes are largely references to his considerable source material and can be safely ignored except by those interested in the specific backup for a point of reference. Keen doesn't seem to have a political agenda, which is a refreshing change from most books on the period.

I suspect this book might be a little bit difficult for someone without at least a basic knowledge of the time period, but much less so than many of the scholarly and even some of the less scholarly works covering this period. This is, in short, a book that is highly readable from cover to cover, and a great straightforward examination of the political, social and economic changes that occurred in England between the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the Renaissance.

This is a fascinating and erudite overview of medieval Europe - one that combines lucidity and accessibility with an exceedingly high level of scholarship. Maurice Keen is a distinguished proponent of the Southern tradition of medieval history, and a ready reminder that the school of Bruce McFarlane is not the only voice of Oxford medievalism.

Dr. Barbara J. Harris' text, English Aristocratic Women 1450-1550, is an important contribution to the historical analysis of women's history and brings an innovative perspective to the debate of continuity and change within the history of women's studies. Dr. Harris redefines aristocratic women's familial, conjugal, social, and political activities in Yorkist and early Tudor England. Her primary investigation focuses on the utility of the female gentry in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and argues that the various roles of wives, mothers, and widows established careers for women that had as much of a political, social and familial impact on their social existence as did their husbands' careers. Despite this modern and original perspective on the aristocratic roles of the English women in early modern society, Dr. Harris is careful to discuss the dichotomous and incongruous nature of the lives led by these women. She argues that while these women constructed empowering careers for themselves, they were still subjected to the patriarchal society in which they lived and were ultimately subordinated by the well established patriarchal institutions that defined both their "legal and material situation" (6). In order to support her thesis Dr. Harris examines the function of these women and their activities within the family and society in general by studying family archives of estate documents, personal letters, wills, and chancery cases. Dr. Harris emphasizes this significant contradiction between female empowerment and subordination by analyzing sources not only written by women, but also by analyzing the male perspective of women. With the comparison of these contrasting view points, Dr. Harris ultimately creates a valid historical analysis on the status of aristocratic women and their overall lives.

In her text, Dr. Harris provides this balanced perception of aristocratic women's history by juxtaposing personal data found in the accounts of noble women and their husbands with publicly available political data. She incorporated 763 male wills and 266 female wills into her analysis and compared her results with data acquired from chancery cases, state papers, and the Cotton and Harleian Collections at the British Library (15). In all, Dr. Harris studied approximately 1,200 aristocratic couples and their children through these various documents, ultimately compiling a very rich source of information for her study.

By using these extensive and well-balanced set of primary sources, Dr. Harris is able to establish the contradictions found within the familial, conjugal and social relations of aristocratic women with respect to their male counterparts. While Dr. Harris is able to draw conclusions about certain types of female autonomy and the power given and maintained by these women during this period, she is also careful to note the sources of an undeniable struggle inflicted upon aristocratic women due to the patriarchal intuitions in which they were a part of. In order for her to collectively describe the familial, social, and political station of these women, Dr. Harris redefines the terms Patriarchy and Career by striping them of their modern definitions and applications and by placing them into the more applicable context of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, ultimately redefining our view of the utility of the female gentry. Thus women's roles within society and within the home become defined as careers and that these careers change according to the female life cycle (Ch. 2, 4, 6 and 7).

Dr. Harris adopted fellow historian Theodore Koditschek's definition of patriarchy and describes it as a "loosely connected constellation of related social systems that ensures the systematic subordination and social inferiority of women and their relative exclusion from access to wealth, status, and power" (qtd. 10). She does this in order to draw her conclusions closer together for her readers and to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the period in which these women lived.

Using this definition of patriarchy, Dr. Harris makes a clear statement that woman during this period had to create their own alliances by networking and finessing their given societal standards and in doing so, created life-long careers for themselves. The careers that Dr. Harris discusses in her text revolve around the aristocratic female life-cycle and the gradual change from the inexperienced wife to the knowledgeable and capable partner who is, in some cases, trusted long after death (62). The evidence about women that Dr. Harris draws upon for her research provides rich and specific cases of women and their experiences during this period that allows Dr. Harris to form more cohesive conclusions about aristocratic women. Thus her depiction of women proposes a more poised and well-adjusted composition of women's lives, that ultimately makes her text a wonderful contribution to the history of women's studies.

The Data that Dr. Harris uncovered on young aristocratic girls within Yorkist and early Tudor England revealed that mother's cultivated their daughters to become good wives and mothers (27-8). Dr. Harris states that aristocratic girls within this time period were required to have some variant of knowledge in subjects such as estate management, including the ability to exercise authority over large numbers of people, property law, basic math and above all, to maintain their "subordinate agency," that is, the ability to be resourceful as junior partners of their households without breaching their dependant position to their husbands (28). As girls grew into these wives, their responsibilities grew as well, and they were required create networks of people not only with in the extended family, but with those in the community as well. According to the research that Dr. Harris did on these women, this meant that wives during this period enacted as a type of ambassador, or link between families, in addition to creating outside networks that helped advance their male kin's careers (61). Another major responsibility as a wife during this period was motherhood, which included raising and promoting the next generation (99).

Although limited compared to that of male resources, the resources available on aristocratic mothers during this period still allowed Dr. Harris to make conclusions about the status of wives and mothers and their roles within the household. She states that the "success in bearing children, particularly sons, ensured the survival of their husbands' lineages and constituted a crucial service to their spouses and in-laws" (99). She also stated that "their positions as mothers to the next generation strengthened their relationships with their spouses and increased their leverage with their husbands' close kin" (99). Thus, it was in a woman's best interest to have children within her marriage despite the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth at this time. However, along with the terms 'patriarchy' and 'career', the term mother changed for Dr. Harris as well. In this period, while compassion, tenderness and devotion to one's child were crucial characteristics of motherhood, the term mother did not necessarily represent or denote the same application that we know of motherhood today, but rather specific evidence shows that the utility of these mothers "created a class-specific, historically distinctive form of motherhood": they were business women (100).

As their children grew out of infancy, mothers focused their children's training for the future with a tenacious veracity (111). Dr. Harris cites specific examples of women like Katherine, Countess of Huntingdon who participated in the negotiations of marriage in order to secure her daughter's future. Women's involvement in these business transactions typically increased after their husband's death (111 and 112). In short, when a husband died, the widow was left as head of their household and assumed many of the responsibilities once performed by the man. Therefore, after the husband's death, the widow legally acted as though she was a man (112). The range of sources gathered by Dr. Harris proves substantial enough to draw solid conclusions about women and their daily lives. However, although Dr. Harris has collected a great deal of evidence to conduct her research there still remains several problems in the investigation of women and their experiences within the English aristocratic elite.

First, even though Dr. Harris has incorporated personal female evidence into her research, she is still working predominantly with insuperable male evidence. Dr. Harris' research includes 763 male wills and male controlled public political records which are contrasted with a comparatively paltry 266 female wills and personal accounts. This discrepancy in available sources projects a male perspective onto the material being researched which cannot be ignored. Thus, most of the depictions of women during this period come from the male perspective of women and society, only allowing a very small window of information on how women actually perceived themselves and the society in which they lived.

In addition to this male dominated system, women's entire career structures were centered on the advancement of their male kin. As mentioned earlier, mothers had to insure the progression of their male children along with helping their husbands to arrange suitable marriages for their daughters. As wives, women "incorporated reproductive, managerial, political, and social functions essential to the survival and prosperity of their husbands' Patronlineages and if left the executors of their husband's will, they had to insure that their husband's wealth, land and other legal work was taken care of following his death. In addition to their new jobs as a fem soles, widows also had to secure futures for children and the continuation of their family (61,128-30). Therefore the female evidence found and researched by Dr. Harris may be biased toward the male outlook of the time, consequently making these feminine resources somewhat flawed by preventing women from truly rendering an 'autonomous' interpretation of themselves in their personal accounts. That is to say that these female records include discussions either completely devoted to or surrounding around the topic of men and their advancement of success as apposed to writing documents that are devoted completely to themselves.

Thirdly, Aristocratic women only made up about five to ten percent of early modern English society, therefore the evidence found for these women do not reflect the majority of the English female experience as a whole. Education and laws applied differently to women of different classes within English society. Women of the English peasantry and other lower classes would not have had the same legal representation or affluence to acquire even slightly similar experiences as the women that Dr. Harris studied, and as a result, the research that Dr. Harris has done only applies to women of the Aristocratic elite and is not applicable to the entirety of female English society on the whole. In addition, Dr. Harris' research is limited to the understanding of aristocratic women in Yorkist and early Tudor, England. Wile possibly similar, her findings do not reflect aristocratic women's experiences in other regions and time periods. And finally, all of the evidence found and researched by Dr. Harris is ultimately left up to the interpretation of the researcher herself and therefore may bring in or include biases that may be unbeknown to the researcher herself.

However, despite all of this information, Dr. Harris has cultivated a group of resources, both male and female, that has opened up a whole new perspective on aristocratic women and their lives during this time. Although historians may never be able to definitively answer some of the questions put forth in the debate of women's history, Dr. Harris has complied a great many rich sources and strong conclusions about the status of these women and their lives with respect to their male kin, and therefore has made an important contribution to the study and development of aristocratic women of this period, thus bringing an innovative perspective to the debate of continuity and change within the history of women's studies.

Barbara Harris', English Aristocratic Women from 1450-1550, sheds much needed light on the position of women in the rigid patriarchal society of Tudor England. Her primary thesis is that "aristocratic women gained wealth, authority, and power as they managed their husbands' property and households, arranged marriages and careers of their children, maintained and exploited kin and client networks essential to their families' political power, and supervised the transmission and distribution of property to the next generation," (pg 6). This and secondary conclusions are supported with a vast array of data from wills and other documents meticulously presented to the reader in a highly readable fashion. She describes and explains the structures of patriarchy: primogenital inheritance enforced by male entail, arranged marriages, dowries, and jointures. She then follows women through all stages of their lives from childhood to death. Widows gain special attention in this text since a massive percentage (around 60) remarried, many multiple times, and used their newfound independence, since they were no longer covert femme who had no legal power, to arrange for themselves advantages marriages. Harris examines in detail the conflicts that arose between remarried women and their multiple stepsons from different marriages in an effort to gain control of willed estates etc. What is most interesting to me was her inclusion of the husbands perspective of the purpose of his wife, womens' perspective on the purpose of childbirth, women at court, and Harris' examination of the reason that the patriarchal system did not change even with so many women (an men) who continued to defy it.

This is an extraordinary text about which there is so much to praise. However, be warned, this is only for the historian/or casual history lover who is used to reading a serious scholarly and meticulously argued (with tons of examples and figures) text. This is simply a must buy for anyone who is truly interested in Tudor England.

To paraphrase H.G Wells rather melodramatically, no one would believe in the first years of the 21st century that this nation was once watched keenly and covetously by formidable personalities from across the channel; that as Englishmen busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied...

The aftermath to the Battle of Hastings was violent and ruthless. William of Normandy's achievements can be seen as a formidable combination of both clear-minded political magination and merciless, hard-nosed execution. However, after William's victory in 1066, the English were not a people who could simply roll over and allow the invaders free access to the island's bounty. A tough and equally brutal resistance was fought against Norman rule for a further five years.

Peter Rex's brilliantly researched book overturns today's meekly accepted stance that the Normans invaded and that was that. Walt, in Julian Rathbone's "The Last English King", refuses to call William 'the Conqueror' (preferring, as you might expect, an earthier soubriquet referencing William's illegitimacy) and the impression you get from "The English Resistance" is similarly one of a population rejecting the concept that they are under enemy control.

Every campaign fought during the years 1067 to 1071 is detailed, with Rex analysing the resistance's character, its motives and its triumphs and disappointments. Here, we are focussed on a time when England was divided into occupied and unoccupied zones, collaborative areas and no-go districts, resistance movements spreading through remote areas of the country.

The book examines William's responses, his initial attempts at pacification, and then the notorious harrying of the north (a rather impotent euphemism that, I've always thought, for which we might readily substitute 'genocide' or 'ethnic cleansing' if these battles and skirmishes were being played out on our news screens today). This is an eloquent portrayal of a chaotic period, which demonstrates that the English were not conquered as easily as was once thought. Perhaps the comparison with "The War of the Worlds" isn't quite so inappropriate after all.

Having interest in this period since college days and having books on the shelf of this period, I was pleasantly surprised at last to find a book that told of the period after the 1066 conquest. Most generally whether in college courses or history books dealing with this era, everything halts at the conquest. Everything was fine, peaceful, everyone working together, right? Well as the author relates, nothing could be farther from the tragic truth. 'Ethnic cleansing' of our age had its predecessor in England after 1066.

However, as this author and his engrossing book tell much happened in this hardly ever written about "underground war against the Normans". The book is well written, easy to comprehend, and shows the resistance the English continued to offer after the 1066 battle. William did not begin to build the Tower of London because all things were peaceful, no, and in many, many other places as well small castles were needed to keep William's men from being themselves wiped out. All important offices were taken from the English and given to the Norman vassals, a complete changing of the guard.

Though some would view William as offering 'pacification attempts' the truth more nearly approaches a campaign of totally doing away with the native population. William seems to have had little use, trust, or respect for any native English person. The sooner they were gone the better.

This is some story and one wonders just why no one else through the years has bothered to tell it. History at its best.

Semper Fi.

ENLIGHTENED NATIONALISM is a profound and lucid account of how nationalism arose in Germany by tracing its roots to Prussia in the early 1800's after Prussia's defeat by Napoleon. The author's research is based on his groundbreaking analysis of previously unavailable documents. He carefully describes the interplay between King Frederick III, his aristocratic advisers -- some liberal, others staunchly reactionary -- the traditionalist landed nobility, and the growingly restive citizenry in the struggles over whether and how to grant Prussia a constitution. The book's well-documented insights help us understand how Prussia later came to dominate Germany.

ENLIGHTENED NATIONALISM is a profound and lucid account of how nationalism arose in Germany by tracing its roots to Prussia in the early 1800's after Prussia's defeat by Napoleon. The author's research is based on his groundbreaking analysis of previously unavailable documents. He carefully describes the interplay between King Frederick III, his aristocratic advisers -- some liberal, others staunchly reactionary -- the traditionalist landed nobility, and the growingly restive citizenry in the struggles over whether and how to grant Prussia a constitution. The book's well-documented insights help us understand how Prussia later came to dominate Germany.

I have not read this book. However, I'd like to point out that Tim Berners-Lee claims that it was the inspiration for his inventing the World Wide Web. !!!

This detailed Victorian compendium of advice & instructions is fascinating. I first ran across mention of it in an Agatha Christie mystery, and it sounded like an interesting peek into the encyclopedic rules, customs, and social beliefs of a certain class in this era--which it is--but I never expected it to be so much fun to read!!

Densely written, thin-leaved, this book is invaluable if you want to delve into questions ranging from "which hand should a lady use to accept a gift from a gentleman whose attentions she wishes to discourage?" to "How can I tell this fish is fresh?" to "How much should I pay the second housemaid?" to "Where should I store nails?"
It includes recipes for food, medicines, and cleansers, accounting tables, morals, stern admonishments on proper dress, child-rearing instructions, and so much more I can't begin to approach the subject. Each question answered is numbered, and appears in a loose order, but the accompanying index helps to organize it somewhat; each page is topped by a Poor-Richard-style aphorism that might or might not relate to that page's content.

If you've ever been seriously or casually interested in How People Lived Back Then (and There; it appears aimed mainly at a London audience of middle-to-upper class, but again, I didn't get far enough through to be sure)--you will find something to enthrall, amuse or enlighten you here.

ETA: the foreword describes it best, proclaiming:

""Whether You Wish to Model a Flower in Wax;
to Study the Rules of Etiquette;
to Serve a Relish for Breakfast or Supper;
to Plan a Dinner for a Large Party or a Small One;
to Cure a Headache;
to Make a Will;
to Get Married;
to Bury a Relative;
Whatever You May Wish to Do, Make, or to Enjoy,
Provided Your Desire has Relation to the Necessities of Domestic Life,
I Hope You will not Fail to 'Enquire Within.'"--Editor..."