Author: Fintan O'Toole Publisher: Liveright Publishing ISBN: 1631496549 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 788
Book Description
“[L]ike reading a great tragicomic Irish novel.” —James Wood, The New Yorker “Masterful . . . astonishing.” —Cullen Murphy, The Atlantic "A landmark history . . . Leavened by the brilliance of O'Toole's insights and wit.” —Claire Messud, Harper’s Winner • 2021 An Post Irish Book Award — Nonfiction Book of the Year • from the judges: “The most remarkable Irish nonfiction book I’ve read in the last 10 years”; “[A] book for the ages.” A celebrated Irish writer’s magisterial, brilliantly insightful chronicle of the wrenching transformations that dragged his homeland into the modern world. Fintan O’Toole was born in the year the revolution began. It was 1958, and the Irish government—in despair, because all the young people were leaving—opened the country to foreign investment and popular culture. So began a decades-long, ongoing experiment with Irish national identity. In We Don’t Know Ourselves, O’Toole, one of the Anglophone world’s most consummate stylists, weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary “backwater” to an almost totally open society—perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history. Born to a working-class family in the Dublin suburbs, O’Toole served as an altar boy and attended a Christian Brothers school, much as his forebears did. He was enthralled by American Westerns suddenly appearing on Irish television, which were not that far from his own experience, given that Ireland’s main export was beef and it was still not unknown for herds of cattle to clatter down Dublin’s streets. Yet the Westerns were a sign of what was to come. O’Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish, women in particular. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism. In O’Toole’s telling, America became a lodestar, from John F. Kennedy’s 1963 visit, when the soon-to-be martyred American president was welcomed as a native son, to the emergence of the Irish technology sector in the late 1990s, driven by American corporations, which set Ireland on the path toward particular disaster during the 2008 financial crisis. A remarkably compassionate yet exacting observer, O’Toole in coruscating prose captures the peculiar Irish habit of “deliberate unknowing,” which allowed myths of national greatness to persist even as the foundations were crumbling. Forty years in the making, We Don’t Know Ourselves is a landmark work, a memoir and a national history that ultimately reveals how the two modes are entwined for all of us.
Author: James O'Shea Publisher: PublicAffairs ISBN: 1610392140 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 416
Book Description
In 2000, after the Tribune Company acquired Times Mirror Corporation, it comprised the most powerful collection of newspapers in the world. How then did Tribune nosedive in to bankruptcy and public scandal? The Deal from Hell is the riveting narrative in which veteran editor James O'Shea takes us behind the scenes of the decisions that led to that ongoing disaster.
Author: Richard English Publisher: Pan Macmillan ISBN: 0330475827 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 640
Book Description
Richard English's brilliant new book, now available in paperback, is a compelling narrative history of Irish nationalism, in which events are not merely recounted but analysed. Full of rich detail, drawn from years of original research and also from the extensive specialist literature on the subject, it offers explanations of why Irish nationalists have believed and acted as they have, why their ideas and strategies have changed over time, and what effect Irish nationalism has had in shaping modern Ireland. It takes us from the Ulster Plantation to Home Rule, from the Famine of 1847 to the Hunger Strikes of the 1970s, from Parnell to Pearse, from Wolfe Tone to Gerry Adams, from the bitter struggle of the Civil War to the uneasy peace of the early twenty-first century. Is it imaginable that Ireland might – as some have suggested – be about to enter a post-nationalist period? Or will Irish nationalism remain a defining force on the island in future years? 'a courageous and successful attempt to synthesise the entire story between two covers for the neophyte and for the exhausted specialist alike' Tom Garvin, Irish Times
Author: Fintan O'Toole Publisher: Apollo ISBN: 9781789540994 Category : European Union countries Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
'A wildly entertaining but uncomfortable read ... Pitilessly brilliant' JONATHAN COE. 'There will not be much political writing in this or any other year that is carried off with such style' The Times. A TIMESBOOK OF THE YEAR. 'A quite brilliant dissection of the cultural roots of the Brexit narrative'David Miliband. 'Hugely entertaining and engrossing'Roddy Doyle. 'Best book about the English that I've read for ages'Billy Bragg. A fierce, mordantly funny and perceptive book about the act of national self-harm known as Brexit. A great democratic country tears itself apart, and engages in the dangerous pleasures of national masochism. Trivial journalistic lies became far from trivial national obsessions; the pose of indifference to truth and historical fact came to define the style of an entire political elite; a country that once had colonies redefined itself as an oppressed nation requiring liberation. Fintan O'Toole also discusses the fatal attraction of heroic failure, once a self-deprecating cult in a hugely successful empire that could well afford the occasional disaster. Now failure is no longer heroic - it is just failure, and its terrible costs will be paid by the most vulnerable of Brexit's supporters. A new afterword lays out the essential reforms that are urgently needed if England is to have a truly democratic future and stable relations with its nearest neighbours.
Author: Fintan O'Toole Publisher: PublicAffairs ISBN: 1586488821 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 240
Book Description
The death of the Celtic tiger is not an extinction event to trouble naturalists. There was, in fact nothing natural about this tiger, if it ever really existed. The "Irish Economic miracle" was built on good old-fashioned subsidies (from the European Union) and the simple fact that until the 1980s Ireland was by the standards of the developed world so economically backward that the only way was up. And as it began to catch up to European and American averages, the Irish economy could boast some seemingly remarkable statistics. These lured in investors, the Irish deregulated and all but abandoned financial oversight, and a great Irish financial ceilidh began. It would last for a decade. When the global financial crash of 2008 arrived it struck Ireland harder than anywhere - even Iceland looked like a model of rectitude compared to the fiasco that stretched from Cork to Dublin. There was an avalanche of statistics as toxic as the property-based assets that lay beneath many of them And under all this rubble lay the corpse of the Celtic Tiger. How Ireland managed to achieve such a spectacular implosion is a stunning story of corruption, carelessness and venality, told with passion and fury by one of Ireland's most respected journalists and commentators.
Author: Neil Hegarty Publisher: Random House ISBN: 1448140390 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 420
Book Description
The history of Ireland has traditionally focused on the localized struggles of religious conflict, territoriality and the fight for Home Rule. But from the early Catholic missions into Europe to the embrace of the euro, the real story of Ireland has played out on the larger international stage. Story of Ireland presents this new take on Irish history, challenging the narrative that has been told for generations and drawing fresh conclusions about the way the Irish have lived. Revisiting the major turning points in Irish history, Neil Hegarty re-examines the accepted stories, challenging long-held myths and looking not only at the dynamics of what happened in Ireland, but also at the role of events abroad. How did Europe's 16th century religious wars inform the incredible violence inflicted on the Irish by the Elizabethans? What was the impact of the French and American revolutions on the Irish nationalist movement? What were the consequences of Ireland's policy of neutrality during the Second World War? Story of Ireland sets out to answer these questions and more, rejecting the introspection that has often characterized Irish history. Accompanying a landmark series coproduced by the BBC and RTE, and with an introduction by series presenter, Fergal Keane, Story of Ireland is an epic account of Ireland's history for an entire new generation.
Author: R. F. Foster Publisher: Penguin Books ISBN: 9780140132502 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 708
Book Description
Masterfully blending narrative and interpretation, and R.F. Foster's Modern Ireland: 1600-1972 looks at how key events in Irish history contributed to the creation of the 'Irish Nation'. 'The most brilliant and courageous Irish historian of his generation' Colm Tóibín, London Review of Books 'Remarkable ... Foster gives a wise and balanced account of both forces of unity and forces of diversity ... a master work of scholarship' Bernard Crick, New Statesman 'A tour de force ... Anyone who really wants to make sense of Ireland and the Irish must read Roy Foster's magnificent and accessible Modern Ireland' Anthony Clare 'A magnificent book. It supersedes all other accounts of modern Irish history' Conor Cruise O'Brien, Sunday Times 'Dazzling ... a masterly survey not so much of the events of Irish history over the past four centuries as of the way in which those events acted upon the peoples living in Ireland to produce in our own time an "Irish Nation" ... a gigantic and distinguished undertaking' Robert Kee, Observer 'A work of gigantic importance. It is everything that a history book should be. It is beautifully and clearly written; it seeps wisdom through its every pore; it is full of the most elegant and scholarly insights; it is magnificently authoritative and confident ... Modern Ireland is quite simply the single most important book on Irish history written in this generation ... A masterpiece' Kevin Myers, Irish Times R. F. Foster is Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. His books include Modern Ireland: 1600-1972, Luck and the Irish and W. B. Yeats: A Life.
Author: Jane K. Brown Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 9780801493904 Category : Languages : en Pages : 274
Book Description
In this book, Jane K. Brown offers an original reading of Goethe's complex masterpiece in the context of European Romanticism. Looking at the two parts of Faust in sequence, she views the second part as an elaboration of what was implicit in the first, and she clarifies the patterns of thought and organization underlying the play. In Faust, she argues, Goethe not only situates German culture within the wider European literary tradition, but also demonstrates that all literature is by its nature allusive--that it exists only as part of a tradition.
Author: Thomas Cahill Publisher: Anchor ISBN: 0307755134 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 274
Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A book in the best tradition of popular history—the untold story of Ireland's role in maintaining Western culture while the Dark Ages settled on Europe. • The perfect St. Patrick's Day gift! Every year millions of Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but they may not be aware of how great an influence St. Patrick was on the subsequent history of civilization. Not only did he bring Christianity to Ireland, he instilled a sense of literacy and learning that would create the conditions that allowed Ireland to become "the isle of saints and scholars"—and thus preserve Western culture while Europe was being overrun by barbarians. In this entertaining and compelling narrative, Thomas Cahill tells the story of how Europe evolved from the classical age of Rome to the medieval era. Without Ireland, the transition could not have taken place. Not only did Irish monks and scribes maintain the very record of Western civilization -- copying manuscripts of Greek and Latin writers, both pagan and Christian, while libraries and learning on the continent were forever lost—they brought their uniquely Irish world-view to the task. As Cahill delightfully illustrates, so much of the liveliness we associate with medieval culture has its roots in Ireland. When the seeds of culture were replanted on the European continent, it was from Ireland that they were germinated. In the tradition of Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, How The Irish Saved Civilization reconstructs an era that few know about but which is central to understanding our past and our cultural heritage. But it conveys its knowledge with a winking wit that aptly captures the sensibility of the unsung Irish who relaunched civilization.
Author: Colette Brooks Publisher: Catapult ISBN: 164009332X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 241
Book Description
For readers of Rebecca Solnit and Jenny Odell, this poetic and inventive blend of history, memoir, and visual essay reflects on how we can resist the erasure of our collective memory in this American century. Our sense of our history requires us to recall the details of time, of experiences that help us find our place in the world together and encourage us in the search for our individual identities. When we lose sight of the past, our ability to see ourselves and to understand one another is diminished. In this book, Colette Brooks explores how some of the more forgotten aspects of recent American experiences explain our challenging and often puzzling present. Through intimate and meticulously researched retellings of individual stories of violence, misfortune, chaos, and persistence—from the first mass shooting in America from the tower at the University of Texas, the televised assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald, life with nuclear bombs and the Doomsday Clock, obsessive diarists and round-the-clock surveillance, to pandemics and COVID-19—Brooks is able to reframe our country’s narratives with new insight to create a prismatic account of how efforts to reclaim the past can be redemptive, freeing us from the tyranny of the present moment.
Author: Fintan O'Toole
Author: James O'Shea
Author: Richard English
Author: Fintan O'Toole
Author: Fintan O'Toole
Author: Neil Hegarty
Author: R. F. Foster
Author: Jane K. Brown
Author: Thomas Cahill
Author: Colette Brooks