The Last Irish Question
The Last Irish Question

Author: Glenn Patterson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-10-14

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1800245459

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A view of the south of Ireland – political, social, geographical – through the eyes of a liberal northern protestant being asked to rejoin it. 'A pleasure to read... Incisively mixing memoir, reportage and analysis' Daily Mail 'Discursive, humane and meticulously attentive to verbal nuances that can spell a world of meaning' Irish Examiner 'Patterson's travels provide humorous asides, telling insights and sobering pessimism' Irish Independent The reunification of Ireland, which in 1998 seemed to have been pushed over the far horizon as an aspiration, has returned with a vengeance. Brexit calls into question the British commitment to Northern Ireland and threatens its economy. There has been a surge in support for Sinn Féin in the South, a party pushing relentlessly for a poll on the future of the border. If Sinn Féin enters the government of the Republic, as seems inevitable in the coming years, this issue will move even higher up the agenda, with who knows what consequences north of the border. In The Last Irish Question, Glenn Patterson travels the country, looking at this place he is being asked to join and which a significant number of people in the North have spent a very long time shunning. Most of the South is terra incognita to them (as it is to many people who live in Dublin). There have been countless books describing and travelling through Ulster, but never one that turns its gaze the other way. Brilliantly witty and alarmingly topical, this is a social, political and geographical view of the South of Ireland, as well as a journey of discovery for a quizzical Northerner being asked to rejoin it.

The Irish Question
The Irish Question

Author: Lawrence John McCaffrey

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 1995-11-09

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9780813108551

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From 1800 to 1922 the Irish Question was the most emotional and divisive issue in British politics. It pitted Westminster politicians, anti-Catholic British public opinion, and Irish Protestant and Presbyterian champions of the Union against the determination of Ireland's large Catholic majority to obtain civil rights, economic justice, and cultural and political independence. In this completely revised and updated edition of The Irish Question, Lawrence J. McCaffrey extends his classic analysis of Irish nationalism to the present day. He makes clear the tortured history of British-Irish relations and offers insight into the difficulties now facing those who hope to create a permanent peace in Northern Ireland.

A Union Forever
A Union Forever

Author: David Sim

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2013-12-15

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0801469678

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In the mid-nineteenth century the Irish question—the governance of the island of Ireland—demanded attention on both sides of the Atlantic. In A Union Forever, David Sim examines how Irish nationalists and their American sympathizers attempted to convince legislators and statesmen to use the burgeoning global influence of the United States to achieve Irish independence. Simultaneously, he tracks how American politicians used the Irish question as means of furthering their own diplomatic and political ends.Combining an innovative transnational methodology with attention to the complexities of American statecraft, Sim rewrites the diplomatic history of this neglected topic. He considers the impact that nonstate actors had on formal affairs between the United States and Britain, finding that not only did Irish nationalists fail to involve the United States in their cause but actually fostered an Anglo-American rapprochement in the final third of the nineteenth century. Their failures led them to seek out new means of promoting Irish self-determination, including an altogether more radical, revolutionary strategy that would alter the course of Irish and British history over the next century.

How the Irish Saved Civilization
How the Irish Saved Civilization

Author: Thomas Cahill

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2010-04-28

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0307755134

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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.

The Last Irish Question
The Last Irish Question

Author: Glenn Patterson

Publisher: Apollo

Published: 2023-04-13

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 1800245467

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A view of the south of Ireland - political, social, geographical - through the eyes of a liberal northern protestant being asked to rejoin it. 'A pleasure to read, forensically and wittily observed, incisively mixing memoir, reportage and analysis' Daily Mail 'He has a light touch, a way of glancing off things and leaving our perception of them changed. He can dazzle. He tells a good story' Irish Times The reunification of Ireland, which seemed in 1998 to have been pushed over the far horizon as an aspiration, has returned with a vengeance. Brexit calls into question the British commitment to Northern Ireland and threatens its economy. There has been a surge in support for Sinn Fein south of the border. This is a dangerous and divisive issue, and will become more so if Sinn Fein enters the government of the Republic, as seems inevitable in the next couple of years. They are pushing relentlessly, as only that cult-like party knows how, for a poll on the future of the border. In The Last Irish Question Glenn Patterson views the south through the eyes of a liberal northern protestant, travelling the entire country and looking at this place he is being asked to join and which his people have spent a very long time shunning. Most of the south is terra incognita to them (as it is to many people who live in Dublin). There have been countless books describing and travelling through Ulster, but never a book like this that turns its gaze the other way: a journey of discovery through the south by a sceptical northerner. The attitudes Patterson exposes in those rural and small town areas outside Dublin will probably come as a shock to many Irish readers. Patterson is a witty, brilliant observer and this will be a highly enjoyable as well as alarmingly topical book.

Say Nothing
Say Nothing

Author: Patrick Radden Keefe

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2020-02-25

Total Pages: 561

ISBN-13: 0307279286

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW AN FX LIMITED SERIES STREAMING ON HULU • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • From the author of Empire of Pain—a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions. One of The New York Times’s 20 Best Books of the 21st Century "Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book—as finely paced as a novel—Keefe uses McConville's murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga." —New York Times Book Review "Reads like a novel ... Keefe is ... a master of narrative nonfiction. . .An incredible story."—Rolling Stone A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, and more! Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes. Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past--Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.

A United Ireland
A United Ireland

Author: Kevin Meagher

Publisher: Biteback Publishing

Published: 2022-01-25

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 1785902024

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For over two centuries, the 'Irish question' has dogged UK politics. Though the Good Friday Agreement carved a fragile peace from the bloodshed of the Troubles, the Brexit process has shown a largely uncomprehending British audience just how uneasy that peace always was – and thrown new light on Northern Ireland's uncertain constitutional status. Remote from the British mainland in its politics, economy and cultural attitudes, Northern Ireland is, in effect, in an antechamber, its place within the UK conditional on the border poll guaranteed by the peace process. As shifting demographic trends erode the once-dominant Protestant–Unionist majority, making a future referendum a racing certainty, the reunification of Ireland becomes a question not of if but when – and how. In this new, fully updated edition of A United Ireland, Kevin Meagher argues that a reasoned, pragmatic discussion about Britain's relationship with its nearest neighbour is now long overdue, and questions that have remained unasked (and perhaps unthought) must now be answered.

My Father Left Me Ireland
My Father Left Me Ireland

Author: Michael Brendan Dougherty

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2019-04-30

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0525538658

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The perfect gift for parents this Father’s Day: a beautiful, gut-wrenching memoir of Irish identity, fatherhood, and what we owe to the past. “A heartbreaking and redemptive book, written with courage and grace.” –J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy “…a lovely little book.” –Ross Douthat, The New York Times The child of an Irish man and an Irish-American woman who split up before he was born, Michael Brendan Dougherty grew up with an acute sense of absence. He was raised in New Jersey by his hard-working single mother, who gave him a passion for Ireland, the land of her roots and the home of Michael's father. She put him to bed using little phrases in the Irish language, sang traditional songs, and filled their home with a romantic vision of a homeland over the horizon. Every few years, his father returned from Dublin for a visit, but those encounters were never long enough. Devastated by his father's departures, Michael eventually consoled himself by believing that fatherhood was best understood as a check in the mail. Wearied by the Irish kitsch of the 1990s, he began to reject his mother's Irish nationalism as a romantic myth. Years later, when Michael found out that he would soon be a father himself, he could no longer afford to be jaded; he would need to tell his daughter who she is and where she comes from. He immediately re-immersed himself in the biographies of firebrands like Patrick Pearse and studied the Irish language. And he decided to reconnect with the man who had left him behind, and the nation just over the horizon. He began writing letters to his father about what he remembered, missed, and longed for. Those letters would become this book. Along the way, Michael realized that his longings were shared by many Americans of every ethnicity and background. So many of us these days lack a clear sense of our cultural origins or even a vocabulary for expressing this lack--so we avoid talking about our roots altogether. As a result, the traditional sense of pride has started to feel foreign and dangerous; we've become great consumers of cultural kitsch, but useless conservators of our true history. In these deeply felt and fascinating letters, Dougherty goes beyond his family's story to share a fascinating meditation on the meaning of identity in America.

Foster
Foster

Author: Claire Keegan

Publisher: Grove Press

Published: 2022-11-01

Total Pages: 73

ISBN-13: 0802160158

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An international bestseller and one of The Times’ “Top 50 Novels Published in the 21st Century,” Claire Keegan’s piercing contemporary classic Foster is a heartbreaking story of childhood, loss, and love; now released as a standalone book for the first time ever in the US It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas’ house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end. Winner of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award and published in an abridged version in the New Yorker, this internationally bestselling contemporary classic is now available for the first time in the US in a full, standalone edition. A story of astonishing emotional depth, Foster showcases Claire Keegan’s great talent and secures her reputation as one of our most important storytellers.