Ireland Books

I Never Knew that About Ireland

Christopher Winn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

For real travelers or dreamers 4 out of 5 stars.
13 of 13 people found this review helpful.

This is a different kind of travel book. Not a guidebook in the Frommer's or Lonely Planet tradition, but just as valuable for learning more about the country of Ireland. This book covers the four province of Ireland: Connacht, Leinster, Munster and Ulster. Each county within the four provinces are featured. At the end of each section there is an "I Never Knew That..." section. Some things that I bet you never knew about Ireland:

-- In 1822, Richard Martin put through Parliament the first Animal Rights Bill and two years later founded the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

-- Rosslare has an average of 4 hours and 20 minutes of sunshine every day. (Living in Washington State, that sounds like paradise!)

-- You have heard of Stonehenge but did you know that the Grange Stone Circle is made up of 113 stones and is the largest prehistoric stone circle in Ireland (it dates from around 2000 BC).

-- The DeLorean (the famous car from Back to the Future) was built in Ireland and caught the eye of Hollywood producers.

--Sophie Pierce was the first woman to make a parachute jump, the first person in the world to fly solo from Cape Town to London and the first woman in Ireland and Britain to gain a commercial pilot's license. Unfortunately she fell out of a tram and was killed.

Winn has written a book with a warm personable tone. I felt as if I were listening to a fun friend who loved Ireland and knew neat trivia about each region. There is something for everyone as there are facts and stories about famous people, true crime, myths and inventions. Although color photos would have been nice, the numerous black and white sketches add charm to this book.

Winn is a writer, quiz master and producer for theater and television. He has also written I Never Knew That books about England, Scotland, Wales and London.

Armchair Interviews says: A wonderful book for trivia buffs and armchair travelers!

Editorial Review:

In this wonderful compendium, Christopher Winn gives a tour of the four provinces of Ireland---Connacht, Leinster, Munster, and Ulster. Find out where dreams were inspired, ideas were born, and where the unforgettable heroes of Ireland’s past now slumber. A treasure trove of fascinating stories, I Never Knew That About Ireland is packed full of information on the colorful history of the Emerald Isle.
This irresistible book gives a captivating insight into the heritage, memories, and monuments that have shaped each county in Ireland, searching out their secrets and unearthing their hidden gems.

Angela's Ashes: A Memoir

Frank McCourt

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Simon & Schuster Amazon Marketplace: 1175 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1832 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Frank McCourt's haunting memoir takes on new life when the author reads from his Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Recounting scenes from his childhood in New York City and Limerick, Ireland, McCourt paints a brutal yet poignant picture of his early days when there was rarely enough food on the table, and boots and coats were a luxury. In a melodic Irish voice that often lends a gentle humor to the unimaginable, the author remembers his wayward yet adoring father who was forever drinking what little money the family had. He recounts the painful loss of his siblings to avoidable sickness and hunger, a proud mother reduced to begging for charity, and the stench of the sewage-strewn streets that ran outside the front door. As McCourt approaches adolescence, he discovers the shame of poverty and the beauty of Shakespeare, the mystery of sex and the unforgiving power of the Irish Catholic Church. This powerful and heart-rending testament to the resiliency and determination of youth is populated with memorable characters and moments, and McCourt's interpretation of the narrative and the voices it contains will leave listeners laughing through their tears.

How the Irish Saved Civilization (Hinges of History)

Thomas Cahill

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 260 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Nay-sayers knowe not what of which they speake 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I listened to this audiobook on a four day road trip, and I had a wonderful experience with the substance of author Cahill's tales which in my mind substantiate the title's claims... that the Irish did indeed save civilization. Such as civilization is. You probably won't find a college course on this topic, however Cahill's conclusion based on the intertwined threads of history makes sense. I was so impressed by Thomas Cahill that I am listening to a second of his audiobooks, which I find just about as interesting. Being an Irish-phile, I favor this book. And I will listen to it again for my listening pleasure. A good read or listen.

Editorial Review:

In this delightful and illuminating look into a crucial but little-known "hinge" of history, Thomas Cahill takes us to the "island of saints and scholars," the Ireland of St. Patrick and the Book of Kells. Here, far from the barbarian despoliation of the continent, monks and scribes laboriously, lovingly, even playfully preserved the West's written treasury. When stability returned in Europe, these Irish scholars were instrumental in spreading learning, becoming not only the conservators of civilization, but also the shapers of the medieval mind, putting their unique stamp on Western culture.

Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America

James Webb

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Total reviews: 142 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

More than 27 million Americans today can trace their lineage to the Scots, whose bloodline was stained by centuries of continuous warfare along the border between England and Scotland, and later in the bitter settlements of England’s Ulster Plantation in Northern Ireland. Between 250,000 and 400,000 Scots-Irish migrated to America in the eighteenth century, traveling in groups of families and bringing with them not only long experience as rebels and outcasts but also unparalleled skills as frontiersmen and guerrilla fighters. Their cultural identity reflected acute individualism, dislike of aristocracy and a military tradition, and, over time, the Scots-Irish defined the attitudes and values of the military, of working class America, and even of the peculiarly populist form of American democracy itself.

Born Fighting is the first book to chronicle the full journey of this remarkable cultural group, and the profound, but unrecognized, role it has played in the shaping of America. Written with the storytelling verve that has earned his works such acclaim as “captivating . . . unforgettable” (the Wall Street Journal on Lost Soliders), Scots-Irishman James Webb, Vietnam combat veteran and former Naval Secretary, traces the history of his people, beginning nearly two thousand years ago at Hadrian’s Wall, when the nation of Scotland was formed north of the Wall through armed conflict in contrast to England’s formation to the south through commerce and trade. Webb recounts the Scots’ odyssey—their clashes with the English in Scotland and then in Ulster, their retreat from one war-ravaged land to another. Through engrossing chronicles of the challenges the Scots-Irish faced, Webb vividly portrays how they developed the qualities that helped settle the American frontier and define the American character.

Born Fighting shows that the Scots-Irish were 40 percent of the Revolutionary War army; they included the pioneers Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, Davy Crockett, and Sam Houston; they were the writers Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain; and they have given America numerous great military leaders, including Stonewall Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Audie Murphy, and George S. Patton, as well as most of the soldiers of the Confederacy (only 5 percent of whom owned slaves, and who fought against what they viewed as an invading army). It illustrates how the Scots-Irish redefined American politics, creating the populist movement and giving the country a dozen presidents, including Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. And it explores how the Scots-Irish culture of isolation, hard luck, stubbornness, and mistrust of the nation’s elite formed and still dominates blue-collar America, the military services, the Bible Belt, and country music.

Both a distinguished work of cultural history and a human drama that speaks straight to the heart of contemporary America, Born Fighting reintroduces America to its most powerful, patriotic, and individualistic cultural group—one too often ignored or taken for granted.

The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

Caroline Alexander

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 161 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Melding superb research and the extraordinary expedition photography of Frank Hurley, The Endurance by Caroline Alexander is a stunning work of history, adventure, and art which chronicles "one of the greatest epics of survival in the annals of exploration." Setting sail as World War I broke out in Europe, the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, led by renowned polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, hoped to become the first to cross the Antarctic continent. But their ship, Endurance, was trapped in the drifting pack ice, eventually to splinter, leaving the expedition stranded on floes--a situation that seemed "not merely desperate but impossible."

Most skillfully Alexander constructs the expedition's character through its personalities--the cast of veteran explorers, scientists, and crew--with aid from many previously unavailable journals and documents. We learn, for instance, that carpenter and shipwright Henry McNish, or "Chippy," was "neither sweet-tempered nor tolerant," and that Mrs. Chippy, his cat, was "full of character." Such firsthand descriptions, paired with 170 of Frank Hurley's intimate photographs, which are comprehensively assembled here for the first time, penetrate the hulls of the Endurance and these tough men. The account successfully reveals the seldom-seen domestic world of expedition life--the singsongs, feasts, lectures, camaraderie--so that when the hardships set in, we know these people beyond the stereotypical guise of mere explorers and long for their safety.

Alexander reveals Shackleton as an inspiring optimist, "a leader who put his men first." Throughout the grueling ordeal, Shackleton and his men show what endurance and greatness are all about. The Endurance is a most intimate portrait of an expedition and of survival. Readers will possess a newfound respect for these daring souls, know better their unthinkable toil and half-forgotten realm of glory. --Byron Ricks

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Visions of Glory

William Manchester

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Gripping account of a misunderstood man-- you should read this! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This is a truly *massive* work, equal parts scholarship and artistry. Though volume one runs close to a thousand pages (counting notes, sources, etc.), I finished reading it this afternoon after an off-and-on reading of about two weeks, and it just flew by. Manchester crafted this with such precision care that I fell into the narrative from page one.

The greatest strength of the book itself-- aside from it's subject-- is Manchester's gift of narrative. WC was the quintessential Victorian, as Manchester points out time and again throughout both volumes. It is only appropriate, then, that the author should give some feel of what it was like to live in the British Empire at the time of Queen Victoria. Some of the very best passages, in my opinion, deal with life during the last quarter-century of Victoria's reign. These are not mere digressions. These fascinating glimpses into WC's era help the reader to better understand Churchill himself, who was born a Victorian and remained one to his dying day.

Manchester provides insight into British colonial administration, life in the British Raj at the end of the 19th century, and the upper class's attitudes toward sexuality and marriage. While this is fascinating in itself, Manchester goes even further and weaves a vivid tapestry of politics, history, and culture through his use of personal correspondence. It is his exhaustive use of personal correspondence-- between WC and his parents, WC and his wife and children, WC and Members of Parliament, and between all sorts of people talking about Churchill and the events in which he was caught up--- that this gives Manchester's work the feeling, not of history or even biography, but of a life too large to have been lived by one man.

Five Days in London: May 1940

John Lukacs

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 57 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In his six-volume history of World War II, Winston Churchill deemed the year 1942 as "the hinge of fate," the year in which the German and Japanese armies began to be turned back. John Lukacs suggests that the last days of May 1940 were more important still in turning the tide of war in democracy's favor, for it was in those few days that Churchill convinced his cabinet that Britain should fight on, alone, if need be, against Adolf Hitler's regime. Even as a quarter of a million British troops were being evacuated from Dunkirk, Churchill struggled to reverse the British government's policy of appeasement. In this, he faced opposition from several quarters, including prominent figures within his own Conservative Party. Writing with evident admiration for Churchill--who, he points out, was not well liked, and who had been prime minister for only two weeks when war broke out--Lukacs gives his readers a fly-on-the-wall view of the heated conferences between such well-known participants as Harold Nicholson, Lord Halifax, Neville Chamberlain, and Alexander Cadogan.

"Churchill understood something that not many people understand even now," Lukacs writes in the closing pages of his book. "The greatest threat to Western civilization was not Communism. It was National Socialism. The greatest and most dynamic power in the world was not Soviet Russia. It was the Third Reich of Germany. The greatest revolutionary of the twentieth century was not Lenin or Stalin. It was Hitler." By convincing his government that his view was correct, Churchill afforded Western civilization a slim chance at survival--no small achievement, and one well worth honoring with this fine study. --Gregory McNamee

Stalking Irish Madness: Searching for the Roots of My Family's Schizophrenia

Patrick Tracey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this powerful, sometimes harrowing, deeply felt story, Patrick Tracey journeys to Ireland to track the origin and solve the mystery of his Irish-American family's multigenerational struggle with schizophrenia.

For most Irish Americans, a trip to Ireland is often an occasion to revisit their family's roots. But for Patrick Tracey, the lure of his ancestral home is a much more powerful need: part pilgrimage, part investigation to confront the genealogical mystery of schizophrenia–a disease that had claimed a great-great-great-grandmother, a grandmother, an uncle, and, most recently, two sisters.

As long as Tracey could remember, schizophrenia ran on his mother's side, seldom spoken of outright but impossible to ignore. Devastated by the emotional toll the disease had already taken on his family, terrified of passing it on to any children he might have, and inspired by the recent discovery of the first genetic link to schizophrenia, Tracey followed his genealogical trail from Boston to Ireland's county Roscommon, home of his oldest-known schizophrenic ancestor. In a renovated camper, Tracey crossed the Emerald Isle to investigate the country that, until the 1960s, had the world's highest rate of institutionalization for mental illness, following clues and separating fact from fiction in the legendary relationship the Irish have had with madness.

Tracey's path leads from fairy mounds and ancient caverns still shrouded in superstition to old pubs whose colorful inhabitants are a treasure trove of local lore. He visits the massive and grim asylum where his famine starved ancestors may have lived. And he interviews the Irish research team that first cracked the schizophrenic code to learn how much–and how little–we know about this often misunderstood disease.

Filled with history, science, and lore, Stalking Irish Madness is an unforgettable chronicle of one man's attempt to make sense of his family's past and to find hope for the future of schizophrenic patients.

The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses and Historians.

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Born out of a small research program that began in 1939, the Manhattan Project brought together the cream of the scientific community and the military to create and perfect a weapon more powerful than any the world had known. Racing against time as the war raged in Europe and Asia, and against our enemies, whom we feared were pursuing similar ends, the Project would eventually employ more than 125,000 people and cost a total of over $2 billion—and the entire operation was conducted under a shroud of secrecy, at remote sites around the country.

This groundbreaking book—the first of its kind—collects the writings and thoughts of the original participants in the Manhattan Project, along with pieces by the most important historians and interpreters of the subject. It is a rich and comprehensive compilation of documents, essays, articles, and excerpts from histories, biographies, plays, novels, letters, oral histories, and more, and is the freshest, most multi-faceted exploration yet of the topic. Including material by and about J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Leslie Groves, Klaus Fuchs, Henry Stimson, Vannevar Bush, Harry S. Truman, Niels Bohr, and many other key figures, it also collects the writings and testimony of those in the trenches at the Project, their families, and local eyewitnesses. Finally, the book includes thoughts and concerns about the bomb, set down in the aftermath of its deployment, by politicians, writers, artists, and others who saw that the world would never again be the same.

Assembled with authority and care by the president of the Atomic Heritage Foundation—in cooperation with a team of advising historians that included the Pulitzer Prize-winning Richard Rhodes—The Manhattan Project is an invaluable addition to the historical record as well as a gripping narrative of scientific discovery, military strategy, and moral reflection.

The Importance of Being Earnest (Dover Thrift Editions)

Oscar Wilde

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 61 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Audio CD is abridged on one CD 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I have not listened to this audio CD version. I purchased it and returned it without listening to it. I opened the case and realized that this is an abridged radio play version on one CD. The play itself is delightful. I don't care for abridged versions of most material, certainly not a play that takes less than 90 minutes in its entirety. I urge Amazon to update the catalog entry to indicate that this is abridged. An unabridged version is available from other vendors. Thank-you.

Brilliant and Witty 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I love this play. I love Oscar Wilde. The wit and humor of this play is astounding, and yet at the same time, it is so intelligent. I love it.

Honestly... 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I still smile when I think about this play. It was my first sampling of Oscar Wilde, and I found it pretty enjoyable. It's also been my only sampling of Oscar Wilde. I've been meaning to get into some more of his work, I really have. It's a tale of mistaken identity, of love, of three volume novels, of "Bunburyists" and of fashion. Everyone claims to be Earnest, but they're all rather trivial about it. It's pretty funny too, with a lot of wit and the like through it.

This particular edition is particularly cheap, and it seems like its worth a look.

Editorial Review:

Witty and buoyant comedy of manners is brilliantly plotted from its effervescent first act to its hilarious denouement, and filled with some of literature’s most famous epigrams. Widely considered Wilde’s most perfect work, the play is reprinted here from an authoritative early British edition. Note to the Dover Edition.