Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 176
Irish Fairs and Markets by edited by Denis Cronin, Jim Gilligan and Karina Holton
Hardback; 25.00 IEP/ 30.00 USD / 21.50 UK / 31.80 EURO; Four Courts Press, 256 pages [Add To Basket]This book is the first major study of buying and selling at local level in Ireland. The contributors analyse different aspects of the exchange and sales of goods at fairs, markets and shops from the middle ages to the present day. Assemblies at fairs and markets brought together people from very different social backgrounds and played an important part in shaping local society. Town met country, farmer met trader, and the influences of the wider world were introduced into the local culture. These essays highlight the diversity of the Irish local experience in trading and make a fundamental contribution to our understanding of the evolution of Irish society.
A History of the Black Death in Ireland by Maria Kelly
Paperback; 21.00 IEP / 25.00 USD / 17.00 UK / 26.70 EURO; Tempus Publishing, 160 pages, with b/w and colour photos [Add To Basket]In this book, the first full-length study of the Black Death in Ireland, the author goes in search of the Great Pestilence whose consequences are often obscured by the intricate and tumultuous history of the time and the paucity of contemporary records. Drawing on a wide range of sources, both Irish and European, the author traces the progress of the plague throughout Ireland, examines how the people reacted to this invisible killer, and accesses its legacy in the troubled conditions of medieval Ireland.
Literary Tour of Ireland by Elizabeth Healy
Paperback; 20.00 IEP / 24.00 USD / 16.50 UK / 25.40 EURO; Wolfhound Press, 272 pages [Add To Basket]This book is a delightful Irish journey enriched and transformed by the oral and literary traditions of Ireland's landscape. W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory are the readers' guides to the Sligo hills and their mystical presences. We meet Synge in Wicklow and O'Flaherty on the Aran Islands, O'Connor in Blarney Street, Cork and John Hewitt at him home on the Antrim coast - a host of voices, including Ireland's greatest tale of all, the ancient Tain. Belfast greets the reader in the poetry of Ciaran Carson, and the footsteps of Seamus Heaney bring us around Mossbawn. We view the villages where Goldsmith gambled and drank away his youth, and befriend the penniless poets of 'Hidden Ireland' whose exquisite Irish verse is still echoed in modern song and story. In Dublin are Wilde, Shaw, and Swift, O'Casey, Joyce and Beckett - pouring words upon the cityscapes. Finally, the reader enters Healy's own beloved Liffey, plurabella, to complete a rewarding and exciting travelogue.
Gangster by John Mooney
Paperback; 9.99 IEP / 12.00 USD / 8.50 UK / 12.70 EURO; Cutting Edge Press, 271 pages [Add To Basket]In the summer of 1996, the Irish journalist Veronica Guerin was assassinated because of her investigations into organised crime in Ireland. This book recreates the story behind her murder while chronicling the life of the man charged with her killing, John Gilligan. Written from an inside perspective, the book is a fine piece of investigative journalism - uncompromising in its exposure of Gilligan's life, his meteoric rise in the Irish underworld, his personality and his blatant disregard for law and order - and it forms an intriguing and menacing story. This book is the definitive account of how a criminal organisation, headed by a brutal and unscrupulous leader, can ride roughshod over society's moral and civil codes.
Shaping Things to Come: Strategies for Creating Alternative Enterprises by Colin Coulson-Thomas
Hardback; 25.00 IEP / 30.00 USD / 21.50 UK / 31.80 EURO; Blackhall Publishing, 202 pages [Add To Basket]This book is a futuristic, cutting-edge appraisal of what organizational development in the early years of the new millennium will be life. Its importance for the business market of the twenty-first century cannot be overestimated. The author suggests that rather than organizations becoming even more depersonalized, technological advance will enable more intimate, interactive and iterative relationships, and certainly more individual and inner growth and development than has previously been experienced.
Voyage of the Hougoumont and Life and Fremantle: The Story of an Irish Rebel by Thomas McCarthy Fennell
Paperback; 22.00 IEP / 25.00 USD / 19.00 UK / 28.00 EURO; Xlibris Corp, 376 pages [Add To Basket]Like many 19th century Irish immigrants, Thomas McCarthy Fennell arrived in the United States to start a new life. Unlike other Irishmen, however, Fennell arrived on America's West coast by ship. He was a thirty year-old ex-convict recently released from an Australian prison. As a condition of his release he could not return to his native land. His crime? Treason, or as the Crown's trial judge put it: 'compassing' against Queen Victoria. In the tumultuous 1860s, Fennell organized Fenians - the Irish-American Nationalists who sought by force to rid Ireland of Britain's dominance. He fought and was wounded in the 1867 Uprising, hardly a footnote in history, yet England's Prime Minister Gladstone would refer to it as 'the first streak of dawn.'
An Irish Murder: The Legacy of Tarring Cottage by Caitlin O'Connell
Paperback; 16.00 IEP / 20.00 USD / 13.00 UK / 20.40 EURO; iUniverse, 278 pages [Add To Basket]In this novel, Irish detective Rupert Dunne lives a divided existence between a big city career in Dublin and lesser policing matter at home in County Cork. Now estranged from his English wife and at a personal impasse, he finds himself contemplating the possibilities of early retirement. However, the usually peaceful countryside of Cork has other things in store for him. This book is the first in a projected series of murder mysteries set in current day Ireland.
Towards a Culture of Human Rights in Ireland by Ivana Bacik and Stephen Livingstone
Paperback; 6.95 IEP / 8.00 USD / 6.00 UK / 8.90 EURO; Cork University Press, 95 pages [Add To Basket]Two leading civil liberties advocates, Ivana Bacik in Dublin and Stephen Livingstone in Belfast, look at the state of human rights in their respective jurisdictions. Professor Bacik, Reid Professor of Criminal Law at Trinity College, Dublin, looks at the impact of the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into Irish law on the rights to silence, freedom of expression and equality and the rights of the family, immigrants and children and asks will it generate a 'culture of rights' in the Republic. Professor Livingstone examines the human rights provisions of the Good Friday Agreement, and outlines the challenges which still face the implementation of an effective rights culture in Northern Ireland.
Multi-culturalism: The View from the Two Irelands by Edna Longley and Declan Kiberd
Paperback; 6.95 IEP / 8.00 USD / 6.00 UK / 8.90 EURO; Cork University Press, 95 pages [Add To Basket]Two of Ireland's most outspoken critics and cultural commentators put forward views on the contrasting directions in which the two societies on the island are moving. Professor Longley asks whether Northerners will increasingly identify with Northern Ireland as a shared point of reference. Will they develop a more flexible sense of their relations with the Republic and a post-devolution Britain? Professor Kiberd asks whether a newly prosperous and confident Republic is genuinely embracing multi-culturalism. Is it moving towards a post-nationalist society which commits its citizens to a truly pluralist vision? What does it mean to be Irish at the turn of the twenty-first century?
Can the Celtic Tiger Cross the Irish Border? By John Bradley and Esmond Birnie
Paperback; 6.95 IEP / 8.00 USD / 6.00 UK / 8.90 EURO; Cork University Press, 95 pages [Add To Basket]One of the Republic's outstanding economists, John Bradley, and the prominent Unionist politician and economist, Esmond Birnie, debate to what extent Northern Ireland can learn from the phenomenon of the 'Celtic Tiger'. Professor Bradley asks what lessons the North can take from the success of the Republic's economic planning, and whether it makes sense for the island to trade and seek investment as one unit in a globalised economy. Dr. Birnie asks if the lost level of trade and economic interchange between the two Irish economies is really that abnormal in European terms, and whether a successfully co-ordinated island economy is possible in two separate political jurisdictions.
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