Ireland Books

As my title suggests, this is a textbook and not a book for casual reading. However, it is one of the best and most focused overviews of a country's history that I've ever read. The Irish Experience gives a very detailed account of Ireland's entire history, and it's linear description allows the reader to see how certain events lead up to others (sorry for the vague language). This textbook is however, a summary, and while it is detailed and thorough it does have to compensate some bulk with paraphrasing. I read this book alongside an advanced Irish history university course, and I found this text very helpful in preparation for lectures where the professor would fill in the details that were summarized in the reading.

In Ireland, more than most places, history is not a distant story but a living presence in the lives of the people.
That history, from Celtic origins to the mid-1990's, is engagingly explored by the authors, who have not only provided the expected political history but also have included the mythic and literary elements which are central to the understanding of the people. Special attention is given to the American connection, which has loomed large in Irish affairs - (there are now more Irish-Americans than indigenous Irish).
Well written, with illustrations, reading list, and index, this is an excellent introduction to the complexities of the Irish experience.
(The numerical rating above is a default setting within Amazon's format. This reviewer does not employ numerical ratings.)

The Irish Fairy Cards are loaded with heart warming fairy messages and wisdom from the ages. Jaya Moran's colorful art and inspiring fairies are great for your inner child, and the messages are wise, serious and yet light hearted. A welcome change of pace in the serious world of divination and magic!

I had these on my wishlist for a long time, one thing led to another and I ended up choosing to purchase other things. But I finally got this set last week and I just adore it!

It is warm and magical, but not so cutey and gooey as some other fairy cards out there (which is a huge turn off for me). The art is "alive" and very evocative. Some of the cards I fell in love with straight away. 33-Hideaway/49-The Rebel/29-The Wild One/30-Enchantment/15-Old Gateway...and many more!

I was more or less expecting just a little message for each card, but the book it comes with is full size and captivating in its own right. Each card has a sweet poem for it, a longer description/story about the card then a message the card is giving you. Most of the stories/messages are much deeper and complex than you would think. Also there is a ink line drawing of the image that is on the card. And the way the author writes is part of the magic. She swoops you along to this realm of enchantment with her play of words, evoking a sense of wonder, beauty, serenity and creative joy. There are 6 readings as well as a chart so you can use the cards as a "Fairy I-Ching"....wonderful idea!

I was much more happy and pleased with this set than I ever thought I was going to be. If you love all things Faery and enchanted, magical realms, I know you will love this deck and book. One of the best out there!

Clare Connery has never lost touch with her roots in the countryside of the north of Ireland. Not for her the ephemeral fashion food fads which are here today and gone tonight! She chooses to concentrate on all that is good and wholesome from the land of green and plenty.

Her first major book 'In an Irish country kitchen' is an outstanding work tracing the culinary history of Ireland set against the colourful social development of the island.It is Easy to read and beautifully illustrated.If you cannot travel to Ireland then read this book and you'll be transported there.

'Irish Food and Folklore' is her third Irish book (she has other subjects close to her heart and her other books include a beautiful Salad book now also available in softback, and the very recent 'Vegetable Book').

'Irish Food and Folklore' is a super introduction to the essence of Irish food. Read about the myths and legends that have contributed to many people's fascination with Ireland and try the many easy to follow traditional recipes which really do work!

Having read and entertained my guests to the wonderful delights of this truly Irish cookery book, I felt I should share my enthusiasm of it with fellow Amazon readers. It adds a touch of traditional Irish cuisine to our rather Scottish based diet! Clare Connery really has produced a Gem with this book and may she continue to do so.

An Irish History of Civilization, Vol. 1: An astonishingly comprehensive and extremely idiosyncratic combination of anecdotes shared through fiction, fact, and faction--in more than one sense of that last word. The title is misleading, of course. "How the Irish Saved Civilisation" this is not. In an 800+ page work starting with S/Paul of Tarsus and ending as the Great Famine looms, this collects, in the fashion of the Uruguayan storyteller Eduardo Galeano's three-volume History of Fire did so well two decades ago for Latin America: Akenson displays a collage of people, events, and situations that span roughly 18 centuries. This first volume assembling two "books" through smaller regionally-centered chapters that alternate and appear as the chronology spreads the Irish across the globe, stops before the Great Famine; the second volume will continue the story, of not only the Irish, up to us.

Why start so far back? First, Christianity and its separation from Rabbinic Judaism establishes the missionary momentum that impels the gospel towards Hibernia--well before St. Patrick. Second, Akenson is not only an historian of Ireland but of Judaism at this time, and he seeks to give us a talmudic take on not only all things Irish, but how the Irish diaspora--as with that of the Jews--swirled over nearly all of the planet as colonisation, technology, and ambition all drove the Irish into every corner of the Commonwealth, and far beyond even its ever-expanding domains. Third, what worked for Paul worked for Pat: they both knew how to lay on the shame and then offer their hearers the remedy--baptism. Akenson links Patrick's nagging mistrust of the body--based on an intelligent if inevitably speculative interpretation of his crucial letter admitting a secret sin--with a culturally Irish desire to save face. This union of shame with its antidote resulted in his success, legendary or historical--since Christianity quickly spread. How? Patrick knew how to manipulate the pride and the status of those nobles listening to Patrick's exhortations, and once these influential Irish leaders capitulated, their followers with little resistance humbly and inevitably followed suit.

Akenson emphasizes a few key points among thousands of equally thoughtful, if less consistently repeating but historically inspired situations that speckle his vivid vignettes. First, the Irish, until the Famine, were as much characterised by Protestant as by Catholic emigres. Next, many of these same Irish contrary to the lore of Orange lodges and parochial catechisms alike, hopped back and forth over the supposed sectarian divide much more nimbly and often for less than sanctified reasons--usually relating to marriage, wealth, survival, pragmatism, and/or ambition. Also, these claim-jumpers complicate any descendent's assertion that one's Irish ancestors were forever faithful to the true Faith, whichever one that may have been. Not to overlook that many Irish found Canada--with its legacy from the French of comparatively greater religious toleration and a more congenial cultural climate than that of the United States--a more appealing destination that until the Famine rivalled or bested the U.S. in its Irish contingents.

Finally, also contrary to custom, the Irish were not "black slaves in white skin." Akenson rejects a lazy Marxist superstructure thrust upon the quicksands of historical certainty. Nearly every tale he tells challenges 'fact'. Barbados may have been unpleasant, but freedom awaited those even if convicted or indentured, which was more than their African and Indian counterparts could expect. Akenson never lets us escape the uncomfortable legacy of the Irish throughout worlds, New perhaps more often than Old: they were happily as much victimisers as they were victims on behalf of British Civilisation as We Know It. Montserrat--where briefly an Irish-dominated 'republic' showed no less mercy towards its darker inhabitants from its sunburned social climbers--and the other slave-dominated Caribbean islands provide a particularly rueful surfeit of plenty to back up this claim. Republicans, throughout these pages, often turn coats rapidly, and more often than not find England a convenient refuge after their activism ceases. More than one family tree hides both those judged heroes as well as those who later generations would call traitors. Akenson insists that no Irish truism as to loyalty on either side of the divides long built can remain impervious to the steady nudge of the historian's trowel beneath these sectarian and ideological facades. Religion and ideology prove more flags of convenience than banners for processions when genealogies are scrutinised. The Irish had the comparative luxury in those harsh early modern centuries of a choice to leave their island hell for an island less romanticised but more profitable for many gamblers and chancers--those willing to manipulate the slave economy, rig the sugar or pirate trades, and spin its imperialist wheels and capitalist roulette to their advantage.

That is, the Irish may have been driven to emigrate through undoubted hard times and few prospects, but few went unwillingly, and far more left with little regret as they sailed as close as Liverpool or as far away as the antipodes. Even the convicts shipped off for political reasons, Akenson argues, constituted only about 1.5% of those transported to Australia; the ODC's, moreover, were far more often indecent if all too ordinary: careerist criminals the norm rather than doe-eyed innocents trussed and tossed for stealing a loaf of bread.

If this was all, it could have been expressed in far fewer pages. This book took me about 10 nights of quite a lot of free time to finish; and I admit I did read quickly. The pace, luckily, prevents you from nodding off, and the bite-size slices of his history encourage nibbling. Akenson has a like it or leave it narrative style. The book did not weary me except in propping up its considerable bulk. I can't, however, award this less than a rare five stars. This quirky compilation creates rhythms that invade my reveries.

Happily, no mean feat in these days of expensive productions from university presses, this (Montreal/Kingston-printed McGill-Queen's UP/London, Granta Books) offering provides great value for the money. Yes, perhaps if I was editor I might dare to excise a couple of hundred pages. But, as I am sure Akenson himself asserted, which pages to be cut would be debated and deflected eloquently by their creator.

In its abundance, its rationalism, and its attitude, the result's reminiscent of the Enlightenment writers who cultivated a loftier distance from the fools that we mortals be, but not without a soft spot for the dreams, comforts, and illusions even the best educated and most rational share with the rest of us less benighted proles. Harvard and Yale taught him; he has written dozens of books and won prizes and earned richly endowed (undoubtably) chairs at prestigious universities. But, he still has the common touch--if that touch bears scorn perhaps a bit more often than sentiment. Akenson's more akin to Voltaire rather than Rousseau.

Consider, if you're wondering if this book's for you, these sorts of descriptions. 'Spenser, like Raleigh, was a man whose hard and instinctive brutality was constantly being overlimed with a wash of chivalry; and that wash then was enhued into a mural, one so graceful that the viewer forgot that the artist had used a pigment whose fixative was blood.' (161) This shows characteristically Akenson's choice of the arresting metaphor, the slightly erudite (and sometimes overly recondite, as he is wont to use archaic verbs that echo long-discarded Hiberno-anglicisms) word selection, and the graceful balance of his demotic but persistently graceful clauses.

He compares one memorable figure, the Jewish George Benjamin who led Canada's Orange Lodges (this is not a misprint), in his own horse-mounted posture to 'a sphere upon a pine table.' (778) He can be funny. He can be dramatic. Tairoa, a Cook Islander in 1801, looks back at a British ship from which he, in his grab for fame, speared a 'pale angel': he is confounded when 'a long bamboo stick was pointed at him from the foreigner's vessel. He saw a light and heard a noise only a decasecond before his world exploded into searing pain, blinding sunshine, and a roaring of reef-shredded breakers. He fell dead in the bottom of his canoe.' (532-3)

Rewardingly, Akenson can be wise. He compares the labors of Robert Maunsell to translate the Bible into Maori to the far less laborious efforts over exactly the same number of years of Darwin, and wonders why we only praise the latter scholar. Perhaps, as he contemplates when conjuring up Emain Macha in 200 CE, Akenson through craft, cunning, and compassion, rescues history for the rest of us, who too are minor unsung figures in the long march to and from and through civilisation, here and there intersected by the Irish, however dimly recalled as our ancestors, conspirators, conquerors, or companions. Why, as Saul wonders in an opening scene, recite so much seemingly useless information, not only the praises of those famed like Darwin but those otherwise forgotten such as Maunsell? 'Professional remembers counted a lot. One cannot have a world run by aristocrats unless someone remembers who is a ruler and who a commoner or slave.' (61)

Akenson returns his story of the Irish and so many others to those of us who come from not only aristocrats and commoners and slaves--and, in these pages, the frequent frictions and couplings among and between all three factions. While many of the latter two categories remain nameless, and many others mere mentions in testimonies or ledgers, all--not only the first class usually granted that dubious honor--find their voices here. The noble and the servant, the Catholic, Protestant, a few Jews, and one Irishman deigned a Sikh deity (the inconclusive, almost Borgesian account of John Nicholson) all jostle for position. I will have to wait for the reading of the second volume, I suppose, to find out if there is more about this Anglo-Irish Sikh god. One of hundreds of characters here.

This surprisingly affordable and handsomely designed volume, the first "two books" comprising the first installment of two volumes, preserves these voices from Asia Minor to the ends of the earth as of 1845, where there always, as Akenson imagines it, can be found an Irish man or woman or someone who once was one, or once was engendered by, or once was owned by, or once knew one!

Mr. Murphy's review is actually for volume 1 (books 1 & 2). Prospective buyers, and esp. AMAZON itself should know that you would never find this volume 2 (books 3 & 4)on Amazon, unless you know, and search by, ISBN. For some bizarre reason, if you search by author or title, volume 2 just doesn't show up! Amazon has revamped its options for users to provide corrections - with the result that the above oddity cannot even be reported except here.

Oh, the book is too serious to describe it just in few words. It is extremely detailed and requires broad knowlegde of the subject. It covers Irish history from the earliest times of written sources or even earlier - from the times that we only know from sages and myths to approximately 12th century. This book is a must for all the people who are scholarly interested in Irish history, but can be hard to read for people who are not that serious about it. So, I stronly recommend it to all history students, but I would advise all the diletans to prepare themselves better before they begin reading this great and very important book.

Medieval Irish history is a minority-interest field to begin with, but finding a good secondary source that accurately separates myth from history is difficult at best. F. J. Byrne, always a thorough historian, has produced what could be the definitive history of the medieval Irish political world. It is a general work, to be sure, and in that lies its strength. Until recently, the histories available to students of medieval Ireland had a fair amount of questionable data and did not focus specifically on the ever-changing political and ecclesiastical influences that the rulers of the time had to deal with.
Byrne's work is also invaluable because, unlike many other histories, it is not provincial in scope, but rather manages to grasp the political climate of medieval Ireland in total. His presentation is effective, and his writing style is far from boring. This work belongs in the forefront not only of medieval Irish history, but also of regional historical studies worldwide.

A remarkable collection of essays on themes suggestd to the author by specific Irish locations of special significance to him. Beautifully written they remind me of a combination an agnostic Fred Buchner and a modern Annie Dillard

I read Irish Nocturnes with a great deal of pleasure. Everyone of the 18 essays brought me closer to what one might refer to as the unexpected beauty in our lives. One will definitely fall in love with life. Everyday experiences are told with a touch of wonder to them. As the essays grow deeper in lyricism and poetry, so does the universal appeal of the sentiments they invoke, including longing, nostalgia, gentleness,childlike optimism,adult realism, and stability. The author, Chris Arthur, is a master of sharing personal experiences in a way that they can become one's own. Although I have not been to Ireland, I find myself sharing the author's pathos for Ireland's beauty and strength. I recommend this collection of essays to everyone interested in that which is both beautiful and thoughtful.

I found this book truly intriguing -- a brilliant new angle on Irish history and culture. I was fascinated by the introductory chapter on ancient Roman visions of Ireland,then found myself carried along on an exotic, compelling ride through India and the East -- meticulously researched, elegantly written, a wonderful addition to the scholarship of Irish culture and letters.

Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History by Joseph Lennon (Syracuse University Press) Centuries before W. B. Yeats wove Indian, Japanese, and Irish forms together in his poetry and plays, Irish writers found kinships in Asian and West Asian cultures. This book maps the unacknowledged discourse of Irish Orientalism within Ireland's complex colonial heritage. Relying on cultural and postcolonial theory, Joseph Lennon examines Irish impressions of Asia and West Asia, understood together as the Orient in the West.
British writers from Cambrensis to Spenser depicted Ireland as a remote borderland inhabited by wild descendants of Asian Scythians-barbarians to the ancient Greeks. Contemporaneous Irish writers likewise borrowed classical traditions, imagining the Orient as an ancient homeland. Lennon traces the influence of Irish Orientalism through origin Iegends, philology, antiquarianism, and historiography into Irish literature and culture, exploring the works of Keating, O'Flaherty, Swift, Vallancey, Sheridan, Moore, Croker, Owenson, Mangan, de Vere, and others. He explores a key moment of Irish Orientalism-the twentieth-century Celtic Revival-discussing the works of Gregory, Casement, Connolly, and Joyce, but focusing on Theosophist writers W. B. Yeats, George Russell, James Stephens, and James Cousins.
Excerpt: The dominant imperial discourse of European Orientalism emerged in Britain and France; this discourse had considerable impact in Ireland, but Irish Orientalism has a distinct history. Native Irish representations of Asian and West Asian cultures date back to an Irish tradition in the ninth century. Many of these representations depict Irish ancestors migrating from Asia. Following these early narratives of the Orient, Ireland has been identified, compared, and contrasted with various Asian cultures. For early modern and medieval Irish writers, parts of the Orient signaled Ireland's ancient heritage. Later, because of Ireland's complex relationship with the British Empire, the Orient also came to signify another arm of British conquest for many Irish writers. Witnessing the process of cultural misrepresentation given by British commentators and historians of Ireland, Irish writers often highlighted the constructed nature of cultural representations when discussing both Irish history and the Orient. Imperial British texts had long compared Ireland with other Oriental cultures, at first in order to textually barbarize Ireland and later in order to discover intra-imperial strategies for governing its colonies. Such British representations further encouraged Irish writers to use the Orient allegorically and indirectly comment on cultural differences, nationalism, unionism, sectarianism, and imperialism. To study Irish writings on the Orient, therefore, is also to study Irish cultural narratives of antiquity, Celticism, and nation.
The pervasive nature of the Celtic-Oriental affinity has long been seen as an underlying tissue of Irish culture, based on legends of successive migrations to Ireland from the Orient recorded as Ireland's origin legends in the medieval chronicle Lebor Gabála Érenn. Evidence of such affinities has subsequently been claimed in race, language, and culture and more particularly in music (Arabian-Moroccan-Celtic), knot work (Ethiopian-Arabic-Celtic), mysticism (Indian-Persian-Irish), travel and trade (Scythian-Phoenician-Celtic), architecture (Egyptian-Indian-Eskimo-Celtic), physiognomy (Mongol-African-Gael), ancient dress (Chinese-Scythian-Celtic), ancient law (Brahmin-Brehon), warfare (Egyptian-Scythian-Celtic), politics (Irish-Indian-Persian-Egyptian-Chinese), and, generally, sensibility ( on the Orient not only brought these origin legends appear in a variety of texts: grammatical texts, genealogies, histories and pseudohistories, pastoral dialogues, pseudo-letter collections, travel narratives, antiquarian studies, Orientalist romances, Celticist studies, popular fiction, anti-colonial critiques, syncretic Irish-Asian works. Viewed apart, these texts have seemed idiosyncratic to literary scholars. Viewed together, they coalesce as a history and constitute an unacknowledged discourse in Irish culture and European imperialism-a discourse that seeded decolonizing critiques of imperialism around the globe.
Scholars have dismissed Irish Orientalist representations as significant because they seem provincial borrowings from British, French, and German Orientalism or because they are based in legend and speculation, not in science or modern historiography. Until recently, studies of Irish nationalism have also passed over Celtic-Oriental and Irish-Asian representations, dismissing them for being self-deprecating or reactionary, for merely reversing the imperial stereotypes of Orientalists and Celticists. Supposedly defined by the semiotic binary of imperial assertions and nationalist reversals, Irish Orientalism has been dismissed as a distinctive discourse, seen as an impossibility by nationalist critics in British, Irish, and postcolonial arenas. But this dismissal is valid only if the supremacy of the imperial-nationalist dynamic is admitted. Because arguments that dismiss Irish Orientalist writers as defensive joiners or opportunistic chanters (on either the imperial or the nationalist side) are discussed later, I will not discuss them here. This study itself runs the danger of also being dismissed as the latest in a long series of illogical discussions about connections between the Oriental and the Celt. But the goal of this work is not to reassert the legendary Oriental origins of the Irish. The goal is to re-veal a semiotic history, as well as the cultural contexts and the ramifications of Ireland's Oriental imaginings.

With the simple layout of the chords and the lyrics to many favorites you'll be on your way to busking in a matter of minutes if you know the basics. The only thing more you'll need is an Irish brogue.

I love the compact size of this book and the songs are perfect. With the vocals and the guitar chords, you can party like an Irishman for days!

A very important body of photographs -- both artistic and historic -- framed by a text of the Travelling people's stories and a compact disc of the people in the book performing their music, over forty years ago. A testament to a great photographer's determination that brings to life a part of Ireland's immemorial past which has vanished in our lifetimes.

This work is truly profound. His composition is genius. The subject matter is an important cultural statement. Alen is without doubt a master photographer. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. The reproduction is perfect. A hidden gem is the beautiful audio cd that captures the the music of these people. What a brilliant work!

A very good exposition of a little documented aspect of Irish history. The bravery of these men displayed in defense of an empire that subjugated them is unfathomable

This unconventional perspective helps to shed light on an aspect of Irish nationalism many writers have shamefully and unforgiveably neglected. Writing with passion, the author manifests the exploits of Irishmen and women during the euphemistically renowned "Great War", via the employment of official war sources and contemporary letters from those at the front line. The book sets the scene and the building miasma around some of the war's major conflicts that were to result in serious loss of life borne out of the ineptitude of senior command. In short, it is a lugubrious reflection of the horrors and realities of war, and of the previously "unknown" heroes Ireland can now rightly call its own.