Best of
Ireland

2006

Small Beauties: The Journey of Darcy Heart O'Hara


Elvira Woodruff - 2006
    Life is simple but sweet in Pobble O'Keefe, with her family gathered round the hearth in the evenings while Granddad's voice fills the small room with stories. But in 1845, a blight strikes the land, the potatoes turn rotten, and Darcy and her family must leave Ireland forever. How will Darcy ever find a way to to bring the small beauties of home across the sea to America? Elvira Woodruff's story of emigration, heartbreak, and hope is vividly illustrated with the warm, evocative oil paintings of Adam Rex.

Connemara: Listening to the Wind


Tim Robinson - 2006
    With Connemara, he creates an indelible portrait of a small corner of the world. From the unmarked graves of unbaptized infants to the shimmering peaks of the Twelve Pins, Robinson brings his close attention and dazzling prose to describe the mountains, bogs, shorelines, and landscape of his home and, at the same time, make a great statement about the world at large.

Novels I of Samuel Beckett: Volume I of The Grove Centenary Editions


Samuel Beckett - 2006
    Available individually, as well as in a boxed set, the four hardcover volumes have been specially bound with covers featuring images central to Beckett's works. Typographical errors that remained uncorrected in the various prior editions have now been corrected in consultation with Beckett scholars C. J. Ackerley and S. E. Gontarski.Beckett was interested in consciousness as a form of comedy close to tragedy and logic as a crime. He loved the tension in 'cogito ergo sum' and took a dim view of the connecting word, the 'ergo' in the equation. Cogitating was the nightmare from which his characters were trying to awake. Being was a sour trick played on them by some force with whom they were trying desperately not to reckon. Beckett produced infinite amounts of comedy about the business of thinking as boring, invalid, and quite unnecessary. His characters did not need to think in order to be, or be in order to think. They knew they existed because of the odd habits and deep discomforts of their bodies. I itch therefore I am." — Colm Toibin, from his Introduction

Vanishing Ireland


James Fennell - 2006
    Through their own words and memories, 64 men and women transport readers to a time when people lived off the land and the sea, music and storytelling were essential parts of life, and a person was defined by their trade. Divided into five parts—Children of the Field, Children of the Music, Children of the Horse, Children of the Trade, and Children of the Water—this collection brings together the stories of those who lived through Ireland’s formative years. We hear of children harassed by the Black and Tans, céilís in kitchens, the rigors of working in the fields, the wonder of electricity, and the devastation of emigration. From coalminers to saddlers, farmers to fishermen, along with horse dealers, publicans, housemaids, and musicians, these remarkably poignant interviews and photographs, in their simplicity and honesty, will make readers laugh and cry but, above all, will provide a valuable chronicle that connects the 21st century Irish to a rapidly disappearing world.

Novels II of Samuel Beckett: Volume II of The Grove Centenary Editions


Samuel Beckett - 2006
    Available individually, as well as in a boxed set, the four hardcover volumes have been specially bound with covers featuring images central to Beckett's works. Typographical errors that remained uncorrected in the various prior editions have now been corrected in consultation with Beckett scholars C. J. Ackerley and S. E. Gontarski."A man speaking English beautifully chooses to speak in French, which he speaks with greater difficulty, so that he is obliged to choose his words carefully, forced to give up fluency and to find the hard words that come with difficulty, and then after all that finding he puts it all back into English, a new English containing all the difficulty of the French, of the coining of thought in a second language, a new English with the power to change English forever. This is Samuel Beckett. This is his great work. It is the thing that speaks. Surrender." — Salman Rushdie, from his Introduction

Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile


Ramor Ryan - 2006
    I've never seen anything close to his work…”—Eddie Yuen, co-editor of Confronting Capitalism“From Belfast to the Bronx and Chiapas to Kurdistan, Ramor Ryan has shown a lifelong commitment to social justice, a questioning mind and an ability to incorporate historical currents into his work.”—Mick McCaughan, Latin American Correspondent to the Irish TimesAn epic debut, Ramor Ryan’s nonfiction tales read like Che Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries crossed with Hunter S. Thompson’s wit and flair for the impossible. A shrewd political thinker and philosopher with a knack for ingratiating himself into the thick of any social situation, Ryan has been there and lived to tell about it.As much an adventure story as an unofficial chronicle of modern global resistance movements, Clandestines spirits the reader across the globe, carefully weaving the narrative through illicit encounters and public bacchanals. From the teeming squats of mid-90’s East Berlin, to intrigue in the Zapatista Autonomous Zone, a Croatian Rainbow Gathering on the heels of the G8 protests in Genoa, mutiny on the high seas, the quixotic ambitions of a Kurdish guerilla camp, the contradictions of Cuba, and the neo-liberal nightmare of post-war(s) Central America we see everywhere a world in flux, struggling to be reborn.Ramor Ryan is a rebellious rover and Irish exile who makes his home between New York City and Chiapas.

Heroes of Jadotville: The Soldiers' Story


Rose Doyle - 2006
    Originally dispatched to protect Belgian colonists in Jadotville, they were isolated, without water, supplies or support when they were attacked and forced to defend themselves in a brutal and bloody five day battle. Shamefully neglected by their superiors, they were portrayed as cowards upon their return home.Heroes of Jadotville: the Soldiers’ Story tells, in the words and memories of those who fought there, what really happened in Africa that fateful September. Rose Doyle uses interviews, reports, journals and letters to bring answers and clarity to an episode long ignored. She blows the lid on the real story of what happened in Africa, exposing how Irish peacekeeping soldiers became pawns in an international affair for control of Katanga and its vast mineral wealth. About the author:Rose Doyle is a writer and journalist. Her novels, seventeen in all, include Fate and Tomorrow (set in the Congo in 1902) and Shadows Will Fall – both international bestsellers. Trade Names, the book of her long-running series in The Irish Times, was published by New Island in 2004. Comdt Patrick Quinlan, who led the Irish UN troops at Jadotville, was her uncle.

Beckett Remembering/Remembering Beckett: A Centenary Celebration


James Knowlson - 2006
    A collection of the notoriously private Beckett's reminiscences about his life and remembrances of Beckett fromthose who knew him.

Watching the Door: Drinking Up, Getting Down, and Cheating Death in 1970s Belfast


Kevin Myers - 2006
    Quickly absorbed into the local community and privy to the secrets of both the Protestant and Catholic paramilitaries, Myers gained a unique perspective into both sides of the sectarian violence.Devoid of any political agenda, Myers describes the streets of Belfast at its bloodiest with searing clarity, capturing every inch of the city's disturbing violence. Flirting with death at every turn, Myers comes of age as the world around him falls apart, fueled by the psychotic rage, senseless murder, and unrelenting terror that surround Northern Ireland's loyalist gangs, paratroopers, police force, and, of course, average citizen.Part unofficial history, part personal memoir, Watching the Door is raw, provocative, and darkly funny, offering an unbridled account of sex, death, and violence in Northern Ireland by one of its most dynamic witnesses.

The Flowers of Ballygrace


Geraldine O'Neill - 2006
    

The Secrets Of Ireland


Kevin Eyres - 2006
    From familiar tourist spots to seldom-seen vistas, this stunning new illustrated book captures the country as you've never seen it before. It covers the whole of the Emerald Isle from Ulster North to Munster South, from Giant's Causeway to the Cliffs of Moher.

The Irish for No


Ciaran Carson - 2006
    

Hurling: The Revolution Years


Denis Walsh - 2006
    

Matters of Life & Death


Bernard MacLaverty - 2006
    It is the finest collection yet from a contemporary master of the form.Beginning with the sudden terror of a family caught up in shocking sectarian violence, and ending with the whiteout of an Iowa blizzard and the fear of losing your way very far from home, this collection is about bonds made and broken, secret and known. In the extraordinary story "Up the Coast," a landscape painter discovers a place that makes her, finally, feel whole, only to have that communion shattered by an arbitrary act of aggression that will resonate throughout her life.Written with effortless skill and empathy, these stories are hauntingly real. MacLaverty's perfect attention to every detail, every nuance of idiom and character, remakes the world for us here on the page.

The Well in the Rain: New and Selected Poems


Tony Curtis - 2006
    This collection brings together a selection of his current works."

Rock the Sham! The Irish Lesbian & Gay Organization's Battle to March in New York City's St. Patrick's Day Parade


Anne Maguire - 2006
    Patrick's Day celebration. Banned and slandered by church and state alike, the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization persisted for over ten years to fight a campaign for inclusion, against the enormous powers of the Church, City Hall, and the Ancient Order of Hibernians in New York. Veteran activist Maguire tells the amazing, funny, and terrible story of this epic grass-roots political battle. Rock the Sham! is Anne Maguire's personal account of what happened when a small group, mostly immigrants, decided to start an organization for Irish lesbians and gay men in New York, and then defiantly refused to go back in the closet.

Sworn to Secrecy


Mary A. Larkin - 2006
    While her partnership with her friend Theresa Cunningham in a dressmaking firm is successful, it's beginning to affect her romantic interests. Theresa's boyfriend Bob always seems to be near Tess. Near enough, one night, to declare his true feelings for her. Tess has to confront her own mixed up emotions concerning Bob, as well as address her feelings for her own ever-faithful boyfriend Tony—especially when he asks her to marry him.

HellFire


Mia Gallagher - 2006
    As she waits for the arrival of the charismatic figure who is the key to the mystery, she recounts her life story – a rich and extraordinary tale spanning two generations of storytellers and deal-makers, fortune-tellers and gamblers, businessmen and warlords, and the people that feared, served and betrayed them. With each twist of this tumultuous story Lucy revisits her childhood and early adolescence – trying to get her head around the things people do in the name of love and hate, greed and desire – and she pieces together afresh the events that led to the night that still haunts her.

I Signed My Death Warrant: Micheal Collins & the Treaty


T. Ryle Dwyer - 2006
    T. Ryle Dwyer not only takes an in-depth look at the characters and motivations of the two main Irish protaginaists but also gives many insights into the views and ideas of the other people involved on both sides if the Irish sea. Eamon de Valera sent Michael Collins to London in October 1921 to negotiate a treaty with the British Empire. The difficult negotiations took eight weeks before the Treaty was signed by Collins, Arthur Griffith and the other delegates in December 1921.To Collins, the Treaty was simply the start of a process that, in his eyes, would lead to full independence for what was now the Irish Free State, but there were many in the south who believed that Collins had betrayed the republican movement.Just hours after signing the Treaty Collins' wrote 'Will anyone be satisfied at the bargain? Will anyone? I tell you this early morning I signed my death warrant...' Eighty-five years on from the historic signing of the Treaty, I Signed My Death Warrant is a compelling study of the controversy surrounding the infamous negotiations and the motivations of the two main Irish protagonists, de Valera and Collins.

In Search of Ireland's Heroes: The Story of the Irish from the English Invasion to the Present Day


Carmel McCaffrey - 2006
    In addition to plumbing the historical record, Ms. McCaffrey discusses the leading Irish families and their social roles, and the great castles and homes that dot the Irish countryside. The history comes alive for the present-day reader. Illustrated.

An Irish History Of Civilization


Donald Harman Akenson - 2006
    An Irish History of Civilization: Volume Two: by Don Akenson.

Crimes of Loyalty: A History of the UDA


Ian S. Wood - 2006
    Yet as Northern Ireland's Troubles worsened in 1971 and 1972, it emerged with a mass membership to defend Loyalist areas against the IRA and to uphold the Union with Britain. By 1974 it was able to defy the will of an elected government and it went on to formulate political strategies for working-class Loyalism.Ian S. Wood uses his specialist knowledge as well as extensive interviews to recount these events and the ruthless war waged by the UDA on the nationalist community. He explores issues such as the UDA's descent into criminality and its relationship with the 'secret war' conducted by Britain's undercover services and he assesses what impact the organisation had on the outcome of Europe's worst political and ethnic conflict between 1945 and the break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia after 1990.

Early Celtic Art in Britain and Ireland


Ruth Megaw - 2006
    This book looks at Celtic art made by communities who lived in Britain and Ireland a thousand years and more before the creation of the Book of Kells or the Ardagh Chalice, the art which is more popularly known as 'Celtic'.

Imagining Ireland's Independence: The Debates over the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921


Jason K. Knirck - 2006
    In this first book-length assessment of the treaty in over seventy years, Jason Knirck recounts the compelling story of the nationalist politics that produced the Irish Revolution, the tortuous treaty negotiations, and the deep divisions within Sinn Fein that led to the slow unraveling of fragile party cohesion. Focusing on broad ideological and political disputes, as well as on the powerful personalities involved, the author considers the major issues that divided the pro- and anti-treaty forces, why these issues mattered, and the later judgments of historians. He concludes that the treaty debates were in part the result of the immaturity of Irish nationalist politics, as well as the overriding emphasis given to revolutionary unity. A fascinating story in their own right, the treaty debates also open a wider window onto questions of European nationalism, colonialism, state-building, and competing visions of Irish national independence. Treaty Documents

Our Story: The Rossport 5


M. Garavan - 2006
    

Dublin v Kerry


Tom Humphries - 2006
    They were the aristocrats of Gaelic football, with over fifty All-Ireland titles between them, but as the 1974 season dawned, the fans of these two great counties could not have guessed what lay ahead. For the first time, Tom Humphries tells the full story of Dublin and Kerry, on and off the field, over the decade that followed — a decade defined by a rivalry that lifted the sport to heights of drama and popularity that it had never known before.

Ruairí Ó Brádaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary


Robert W. White - 2006
    be said to be the last, or one of the last Irish Republicans. Studies of the Provisional movement to date have invariably focused more on the Northerners and the role of people like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. But an understanding of them is not possible without appreciating where they came from and from what tradition they have broken. Ruairi O Bradaigh is that tradition and that is why this account of his life and politics is so important." --from the foreword by Ed Moloney, author of A Secret History of the IRASince the mid-1950s, Ruairi O Bradaigh has played a singular role in the Irish Republican Movement. He is the only person who has served as chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army, as president of the political party Sinn Fein, and to have been elected, as an abstentionist, to the Dublin parliament. Today, he is the most prominent and articulate spokesperson of those Irish Republicans who reject the peace process in Northern Ireland. His rejection is rooted in his analysis of Irish history and his belief that the peace process will not achieve peace. Instead it will support the continued partition of Ireland and result in continued, inevitable, conflict.The child of Irish Republican veterans, O Bradaigh has led IRA raids, been arrested and interned, escaped and been "on the run," and even spent a period of time on a hunger strike. An articulate spokesman for the Irish Republican cause, he has at different times been excluded from Northern Ireland, Britain, the United States, and Canada. He was a key figure in the secret negotiation of a bilateral IRA-British truce. His "Notes" on these negotiations offer special insight to the 1975 truce, the IRA cease-fires of the 1990s, and the current peace process in Ireland.O Bradaigh has been a staunch defender of the traditional Republican position of abstention from participation in the parliaments in Dublin, Belfast, and Westminster. When Sinn Fein voted to recognize these parliaments in 1970, he led the walkout of the party convention and spearheaded the creation of Provisional Sinn Fein. He served as president of Provisional Sinn Fein until 1983, when he was forced from the position by his successor, Gerry Adams. In 1986, with Adams as its president, Provisional Sinn Fein recognized the Dublin parliament. O Bradaigh led another walkout and later became president of Republican Sinn Fein, a position he still holds.

Celtic and Norse Designs CD-ROM and Book


Amy Lusebrink - 2006
    Meticulously adapted from artwork that once decorated ancient rune stones, furniture, sword hilts, and other Celtic and Old Norse artifacts, the illustrations include an amazing array of human figures, animals, and mythological creatures, all ingeniously woven into an intricate network of spirals and interlacings.This book includes a CD-ROM containing 221 royalty-free images, 48 of them in color. Color images are saved in TIFF and JPEG formats; black-and-white images in BMP, GIF, JPEG, PICT, EPS, and TIFF formats.

A Fifth of Bruen: Early Fiction of Ken Bruen


Ken Bruen - 2006
    . . . This is a must have for all [Bruen’s] fans.”—Jon Jordan, Crimespree Magazine“If you love complex, thought-provoking work, then you’ll find something in this collection to intrigue you. If you love Bruen, there’s no doubt you’ll already have cracked the spine.”—Russel McLean, Crime Scene ScotlandEarly novellas, short stories, and poetry by the two-time Edgar Award–nominated author of The Guards and London Boulevard. Includes All the Old Songs and Nothing to Lose, considered Ken Bruen's first foray into crime fiction.

Gaelic Gothic: Race, Colonization, and Irish Culture


Luke Gibbons - 2006
    

The Anthropology of Ireland


Thomas M. Wilson - 2006
    Such understanding is acheived by paying close attention to what people in Ireland themselves say about the radical changes in their lives in the context of wider global transformation. As notions of sex, religion, and politics are radically reworked in an Ireland being re-imagined in ways inconceivable just a generation ago, anthropologists have been at the forefront of recording the results. The first comprehensive book-length introduction to anthropological research on the island as a whole considers the changing place in a changing Ireland of religion, sex , sport, race, dance, young people, the Travellers, St. Patrick's Day and much more.

Dublin 1660-1860: The Shaping of a City


Maurice Craig - 2006
    This highly illustrated book charts the evolution of Dublin into the city it is today.

The Harp and the Eagle: Irish-American Volunteers and the Union Army, 1861-1865


Susannah Bruce - 2006
    Analyzing letters and diaries written by soldiers and civilians; military, church, and diplomatic records; and community newspapers, Susannah Ural Bruce significantly expands the story of Irish-American Catholics in the Civil War, and reveals a complex picture of those who fought for the Union.While the population was diverse, many Irish Americans had dual loyalties to the U.S. and Ireland, which influenced their decisions to volunteer, fight, or end their military service. When the Union cause supported their interests in Ireland and America, large numbers of Irish Americans enlisted. However, as the war progressed, the Emancipation Proclamation, federal draft, and sharp rise in casualties caused Irish Americans to question--and sometimes abandon--the war effort because they viewed such changes as detrimental to their families and futures in America and Ireland.By recognizing these competing and often fluid loyalties, The Harp and the Eagle sheds new light on the relationship between Irish-American volunteers and the Union Army, and how the Irish made sense of both the Civil War and their loyalty to the United States.

The Adventures of Seumas Beg - The Rocky Road to Dublin


James Stephens - 2006
    We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Imramma


Eblanna Raven - 2006
    The Immrama Meditations are a gateway to our inner sacred landscape, the landscape of soul and Imbas.The Imramma seeks to align the three realities - this physical reality, the inner landscape and the Otherworlds. Eblanna Raven is a lifelong practitioner of the art and her teachings are widely regarded as the definitive introduction to traditional Imramma, both by those simply seeking to connect to their Irish spirituality and those who practice Irish Traditional Witchcraft. This edition is fully revised, with meditations and commentaries on each Isle. There is a section at the back for your own notes.