Ireland Books

The "Three R's", as we students used to call it, was the standard text on this period of German history throughout the world during the '50s and '70s. I know of no other book that has replaced it.

My only complaint is that it's light on military matters.

I did not think I would like this book - but it turned out to be surprisingly excellent. It is an excellent history of the politics and social movements for the period. Anyone one who considers them self to be a student of Prussian or German history should read this book. It is a scholarly work - not a popular history. If you take the time to read it you will learn some things.

This book could be a parallel to Immanuel Goldstein's secret book in 1984. See the Soviet Union from a critical yet unbiased viewpoint for the first time and ideologically stick it to the powers that be.

This book could be a parallel to Immanuel Goldstein's secret book in 1984. See the Soviet Union from a critical yet unbiased viewpoint for the first time and ideologically stick it to the powers that be.

This is one of those books that didn't get much review coverage when it came out but has come to be recognized since as the classic on its subject. That subject is how the English novel got thrown into creative ferment by the French Revolution and how that ferment produced the novel as we still know it. It's one of the only books about the late eighteenth century novel that isn't drearily plodding and worthy -- the prose is a joy, full of quirky flair and fizz that will remind you why you ever found fiction sexy. Rousseau, Austen, Scott, Hazlitt, Hogg, Hays, Wollstonecraft, Byron -- this is one of the mosty distinctive and persuasive books available about any of them. The section on Hazlitt's confessional Liber Amoris is the only good thing I know on the subject & puts Tom Paulin's embarrassed dismissal in his big biography to shame. This is a cult work of intellectual history, and deserves to be.

A welcomed and surprising analysis, placed in historical context and revealing meanings and subtexts that had never previously occurred to this reader in a lifetime of reading the classics. Absolutely grand.

As a student of history I have had to read many books about the the rise of the Nazi party, and I must say that this one by far is the best! It is well researched and quite honestly a real page turner. I highly recomend it for anyone interested in Nazi politics.

Benjamin Lapp's magnum opus, "Revolution from the Right" is a fantastic source for scholars looking in the Weimar period of German History. Lapp's style is much like the style of William Sheridan Allen's "Nazi Seizure of Power". Lapp's book is simply a superb historical synthesis. Not many authors have choose to study single towns/provences during the Weimar Republic/Nazi revolution. One can only ponder of all footwork and sweat in writing such a concise historical book. One can study the social, political, economic, and emotional aspects of the Nazi revolution in Saxony. I would recomend this book to anyone who believes they know how common German people reacted to the Nazi movement. This book will add another aspect of the Nazi movement in Germany to anyone's repertoire.

Rose has written a masterful book, capturing the true essence of Antisemitism. I highly recommend this masterpiece. Buy it!

This book details the "bipartisan" nature of German anti-semitism. Non-Christian revolutionaries hated Jews as well, and Rose details their reasons by analyzing the political opinions of various Romantic/German philosophers of the 18th, 19th Centuries. He covers Kant, Hegel, Voltaire, Fichte, Marx, and ends with Wagner, and shows the intellectual development of revolutionary anti-semitism through these philosophers. Some are well-known, like the aforementioned ideologues, others are lesser known. The book shows the development of an anti-Semitic mythology, that began as a Christian anti-Semitism (the Ahasverus-Wandering Jew, Moloch and Mammon), yet by the beginning of the 20th Century, was a fully Secularized anti-semitism.

The important lesson from this book is how entrenched Jew hatred was across the German intellectual landscape in the 19th Century. It wasn't limited to a bunch of Capitalist Christians (as accused by many Marxist historians, who would no doubt be ashamed that their hero Marx hated Judaism), but atheists and socialists as well. A good companion book to this is "Scientific Origins of National Socialism", about Ernst Haeckel and the Monist League, and how the German scientists caved into Jew-hatred as well.

Not only is this a wonderful biography of a great actress/producer/director/teacher - but a lovely insight into Dublin during her life.

There is a protrait of Ria (in costume) that hung in the theatre bar. It was presented to the theatre by former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Charles Haughey - where is it now ?

McGlone writes a compelling and truly enjoyable story about one the most influential figures of Irish theatre in the 20th century. Why, one wonders, does it take a college professor from New Jersey to singularly herald this theatrical giant who alone held together the Irish national theatre during its most perilous time? Her personal and professional history spans from O'Casey to Friel, and, as a woman in 1950's Ireland, forged the greatest acting company the Abbey has ever known - yet her picture does not hang in the National Theatre's lobby alongside the other Abbey legends (Yeats, Synge, etc.). McGlone writes a must-read for anyone who's a student of Irish theatrical history, and sends a blaring wake-up call for the current Irish theatrical establishment to arise and start discussing this great woman's prodigious artistic output and impact, and, ultimately, to restore the plays initially produced under her tenure back on today's Abbey stage.

This is a truly wonderful book which goes far to recover the cultural mindset of the often over-looked Fourth Republic. Jobs has a remarkable ability to choose the perfect anecdote and case study to make his point and consequently brings the immediate post-war period in France to life. What is most enjoyable about the book is the way in which shows that youth culture in France did not spring fully formed into existence in 1968. By examining the cultural meanings attached to the concept of youth (and to youths themselves), Jobs gives the reader a much needed nuanced understanding of the culture that exploded onto the scene in the events of May.

This is a great, smart, and important book on an understudied aspect of French society - the significant and moving intersections of youth culture and national rebuilding. A must read for anyone interested in European history.

I cannot understand why this book has not been reviewed by anyone to date. I treasure this book of short stories so much that I bought a second copy a few years back as I was disturbed about lending it out and never getting it back. The stories in this book are dated between 1900 and 1920 and placed in the western part of Ireland. Each story compounds a double view, at once harsh and bitter in the need of its characters to survive but within a landscape and lyricism alive with beauty. Life is grim but neither tragic nor absurd. It is centered on action amongst the commonplace. I am still enchanted by the visions these tales create and yet ashamed of the part that the English must have played in setting up the social conditions for these to be more than just tales. As far as I am aware, this book represents the only English translation of his body of works. If you have ever read and enjoyed works by Irish authors then this book is a must for you. This will educate the mind, create a longing for travel and move you still further.

I am from the west of Ireland. My husband bought me a copy of this book when we were dating and I had never heard of it. I studied O'Caidhn in school, but knew there was very little of his stuff translated to English. It is definitely, the most precious collection of stories one could ever read. It is so beautiful but at the same time so painful to read through the very vivid descriptions of country life at its simplest level, and it brings a yearning to one's heart to have simple beauty without the heartache. O'Caidhn takes you through the fields in the fierce wind, by the roads, barefoot, in the cold, through that savage wind and rain of the West of Ireland that rips through your skin and makes your soul cold. He takes you through the rocky roads and winding hills, in pain or desperation, and when you see a baby smile with joy or find the heather blooming under a ray of sunshine or your shopping bag doesn't break while you are carrying a few maums of flour for bread for your hungry husband, you experience that 30 seconds of pure pleasure that makes the journey so worthwhile. O'Caidhn knows, he knows, that the simplest gifts are the best. He knows that life is beautiful, even if the journey is painful sometimes. Whereever O'Caidhn takes you, you are there completely, as you read through his pages.

O'Caidhn is this good to read after being translated. Imagine what his work is like if you read it in the native tongue....

Robin Hood is a cultural icon, one of those stories everyone believes they know. It would surprise causual readers, however, just how much of what we think we know about Robin Hood has changed across the years. Many of the stories surrounding the figure, for example, never discussed stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Stealing from the rich, maybe. Giving to the poor? Not so much. Knight has provided us with thorough scholarship, from the earliest ballads through the hollywood movies and television programs (across several countries). The eye for detail is apparent, right down to the fact that the actor playing "Will Scarlet O'Hara" in the "Men in Tights" send-up later wound up playing Hood himself in a Hercules/Xena type television series. Knight is a man who has done his homework! How and why each era claims Hood for its own, and just how this may or may not have corresponded to any true Robin Hood, if there was such a person, is explored. The book is indispensible for the bookshelf of any Hood fan. My only hope would have been for a bit more discussion of Howard Pyle, a personal favorite retelling.

Every culture has need for stories about the outlaw hero. Odysseus, in way, was one, as was William Tell, and John Wayne as the Ringo Kid. Jesus's story certainly conforms to the myth of the "good outlaw," and a more contemporary version was Martin Luther King. The figure best known for being a hero and being an outlaw, however, has been with us for over six hundred years: Robin Hood. Now he has an authoritative life story: _Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography_ (Cornell University Press) by Stephen Knight. Knight, a professor of literature at Cardiff University, is an authority on all Robin Hood lore, but does not here restrict himself to the early ballads of Bold Robin. In a witty and universal tour of the legend, he takes in all the Hollywood and television versions, and even the parodies. Most of them stay quite close to the Robin Hood legend as it was formed in its early stages.

The question for any biographer of such a legend always is: "Did he really exist?" There is an eagerness to find a real human being who performed Robin's feats, or at least served as a starting point for the stories. But Knight doubts there was any real figure: "... it seems highly improbable, or at least unprovable, that a Mr. R. Hood ever existed." It is far more likely that the character in the ancient plays and poems "...is the original Robin Hood, real only in the sense that he is the focus of a real myth." The important thing is not the Robin Hood incarnate, but what tellers and audiences made of him. For those who needed monetary relief, he began not only to rob from the rich but to give to the poor. For those who were distressed over corruption, he especially robbed sleazy officials of the state and church. For those needing national or racial identity, he became Saxon against the bad Norman Prince John. In the twentieth century, he raised his bow against (metaphorically) Nazism and McCarthyism.

Robin Hood has been portrayed by Kermit the Frog (whose green made him a natural for the role). In _Time Bandits_ he was John Cleese, stiffly introducing himself: "Hello, I'm Hood," and going on to explain the nature of the poor he is bound to assist: "I'm sure you'll like them. Of course they haven't got two pennies to rub together but that's because they're poor." Robin's outfit received top billing in Mel Brooks's _Robin Hood: Men in Tights_; Knight explains the association of tights to the story thus: they were "originally deployed so that nineteenth-century actresses playing Robin could show their legs." The myth has proved powerful enough to survive much kidding, and not just recently; a 1600 play _Looke About You_, has the unique stage direction "Enter Robin Hood in the Lady Faukenbridge's gowne, night attire on his head." Knight, in a remarkable and witty study of the formation and re-creation of a legend, shows that in times of oppression, Robin Hood has always been there for us as resistance to authority. May he ever fight on.

You know a book is good when you are wrecked tired and you want to read faster then slower to see what happens next. It's an easy read and anyone who has suffered the Irish in any form will enjoy this to no end. A lot of them are characters we know in life and the comments can only make you laugh out loud, even if you were in a church.

have to say I loved superchick but i think this is even funnier, the situations, the banter, the twists; i guess its a cliche but I couldn't put it down ...hilarious