Ireland Books

For anyone with Irish or Scottish ancestry, and interested in the depth of clan and family relationships, I highly recommend this small volume. Brief, succinct, and to-the-point, it steers clear of some of the mythological baggage that often shows up in this arena.

What pleasure from this book! I live in USA and meet lots of people with Scottish or Irish backgrounds. They are just thrilled to read about their heritage. Personally, I have always wondered about my own surname - now the mystery has been solved. You know, it's a real gift to discover your roots!

This is the kind of book one reads with interest and excitement, and learns the fascinating details of the first anti-imperialist struggle in the early 20th century. This book gives full attention to all sides of this complicated conflict, and presents a very realistic picture without idealising any of the important figures. It is also full of many amazing stories of spying, diplomatic intrigues, political calculations and personal manipulations. At one level the book reads like a historical novel with all the ingredients of passion, disappointment, tragedy and personal dreams. But all above are narrated accurately and supported by a rich collection of Russian, Turkish and English documents, many of them have never published before. This book tells an important historical story with excitement.

This concise and lucidly written book deals with a series of key events in 1918-23 which conditioned the rise of modern Turkey and decided the fate of the Cauacsus. By using new data Gokay subjects them to a new and well-integrated analysis that provides a clearer perspective about the policies of all the forces involved in the struggle for the Caucasus and Anatolia. Convincingly an coherently, he demonstrates how the Bolshevik ideology endangered new strategic realignments and turned Russia and Great Britain into enemies. Gokay uses pactically all the existing literature in Turkish and Western languages and a variety of primary sources. In fact, he is one of the first scholars to make use of the Russian sources and thus bring forth new information on Russo-Turkish relations, including the activities of Enver Pasha, one of the Young Turks' leaders. The result is a balanced, objective, informative, and truly scholarly first-rate work - in fact, the best available succinct study of the subject.

I had a copy of this book but loaned it to a friend. Of course I never got it back. It is a great book - covers all the styles, especially the Ganseys and Shetland styles. Just buy it - you'll love it.

The sweater patterns in this book are divided by type of knitting; Shetland lace, 'fisherman' (Aran) patterns, and Fairisle (complex color patterns). This is an older book, so patterns are presented 'row-by-row' (K2, inc 1, P2, etc) rather than in graphs. Clear color photos show the detail of each sweater and the instructions are well presented. I've referred to this book over and over; it's a constant source of inspiration.

Need to find your family in County Armagh?? This sprial bound book is for you!!! This book has proved to be very useful in research. Such a great "hands on book" Gives you the address and location of records for more research in Ireland. If you are also wanting a more in depth research on families then check out "The Book of Irish Families, Great and Small". The author also has a website Irish Roots Cafe, irishroots.com!

This work was as promised. Helped me by having all the basic Armagh info in one place. I did find some possible connections -I wish it were bigger!

These photographs will take your breath away. The landscapes are incredibly beautiful, and the quality of the images is of the highest caliber. Ya gotta love this planet...

The photographs are so gorgious and real that they make you feel like you are right there. From the cliffs to the sandy beaches and from the light houses to the huge watery rocks make this book extremely unforgettable.

This is a fine wicked knowledgeable book, and entirely readable, especially the beginning, which can be read aloud straight through without losing you your audience.

I first met =A Colder Eye= when I was one of the editors of a literary criticism reference series. We were proceeding alphabetically, which meant that when we hit "O" we got half the Irish writers in one go, also alphabetic near neighbors like Mary Lavin. I found =A Colder Eye= on the shelf at Columbia University's main library, and went flipping through its index to see whether it had substantial sections on the authors I was researching. What I found was that all its index listings for authors had epithets attached: "O'Casey, Sean," it said, "ventriloquist."

"?", I thought, and checked another.

"O'Nolan, Brian," it said, "logician."

"Right," said I, and put the book on my small and extremely selective "books to be checked out" stack. As I knew only too well after reading several small mountain ranges of literary criticism and rejecting most of it, a critic who can joke about his subject, and get it right, is to be cherished. Hugh Kenner knows his stuff.

(It's one of the two great funny indices in English literature, the other being of course the index to =The Spotted Owl=; but leave that for another day.)

You would be well rewarded for buying =A Colder Eye= in hardcover if you did nothing more than read the part about the charming unreliability of Irish recollections; and allow me to say that the ghost of Brian O'Nolan should be both ashamed and proud of himself for perpetrating the interview with James Joyce Senior.

There's nothing else so good on its subject as this book. Enough. Go buy it now.

(And if you like it? Hunt up a copy of Walter Bryan's (that is, Walt Willis's) =The Improbable Irish=. If you like both, you may need to acquaint yourself with the works of Brian O'Nolan. But start with Hugh Kenner.)

A deliciously funny and engaging look at the personalities and history behind Irish literature in a tumultuous time. The care and humor with which Kenner treats the subject of Yeats is just beautiful. Several times I laughed out loud while reading it on public mass transit, much to the dismay and confusion of my fellow riders, but I just couldn't help it. I can hardly wait to read Kenner's other works (and I wish I'd discovered him a long time ago).

I became fascinated with the life of Columba many years ago and found this book in paperback in the bookshop of the Iona Community on the Isle of Iona in 1993. It is comprehensive and objective. It gives a fair portrait of the man and an engaging overview of the times he lived in. It is the best writing that has been done on Comumba and it is history of the highest order.

Working on a graduate level paper, I found this book the most helpful of all of my secondary resources concerning St. Columba of Iona. I searched out this book because so many of the other authors I was reading made reference to Finlay on several occasions. Of all biographical materials out there on Columba, I found this to be the most comprehensive and accessible.

This book is a great reference and I found myself searching it while reading about English history. I love English historical fiction and found this book was ideal in helping me visualize actual locations set in novels about English monarchs like Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. The pictures are gorgeous and the illustrations, maps and descriptions are thorough.

This is a gorgeous book. The pictures are beautiful and the text is very informative. I like the way the book is divided into historical periods.

This ex-pat Jewish Brit loved this book! Not only did it make me nostalgic for home, but it told me things I never knew! This is a concise but complete guide indeed. I fully intend to take it with me on my next trip back to England.

I am planning a trip to London and the surrounding countryside and I stumbled across this guidebook. Because I am Jewish, I was interested in learning more about the culture and history of British Jewish places while I traveled. This book is packed with facts that are presented in a very entertaining way. The author talks about places regular guidebooks miss, and she makes you aware of the great contributions Jews have made to England. The book is well laid out and very easy to use. I can't wait to use it for walking tours when I am abroad!

This united edition of the correspondence was long overdue. The letters of the Emperor and Empress appear together for the first time, cleansed of the transcription errors which spoiled the first (1923) edition of her correspondence, and of the tactful editing which expunged the more intimate passages from the 1929 version of his. Joseph Fuhrmann's footnotes are helpful, thoroughly researched and not unsympathetic to the writers. For students of Russian history, this book is an extraordinarily important source on the government of Russia immediately before the Revolution; it repays careful and open-minded reading. For those interested in the personal life and the characters of the last Tsar's family, it is arguably better still: here we have Nicholas II, affectionate and gentle, occasional author of rather poetic descriptions of scenery (this is not the Nicholas of the blandly factual diary). Here too his beloved Empress, sharp-tongued and energetic and interested in everything, very different to the tragic-eyed lady of legend. High politics and war jostle for attention with amusing little accounts of the childrens' activities, but there is never any doubt that the letters were written in serious times by people who understood and sought desperately to find a solution to the problems Russia faced. They certainly don't make light reading, but if you have the patience, these letters repay your perseverance.

It's hard to believe these letters and telegrams were exchanged by a ruler and his wife under the immensely stressful conditions of WWI. I'm an aficionado of Imperial Russian History, but the unbelievable banality of this couple, relentlessly exposed in their own words is hard to take. A terrifically thorough book, it's a slow read--which certainly makes you feel you're getting your money's worth. I'm glad I bought it, and have learned more about these Romanovs even though their correspondence reveals shallowness and self-interest. Very good book, pitiful subjects.