It has been owned since the seventeenth century by the Anglo-Irish Kirkwoods. In 1932, David Thomson, aged eighteen, went there as a tutor. He stayed for ten years.This memoir, acknowledged as a masterpiece, grew out of two great loves — for Woodbrook and for Phoebe, his pupil. In it he builds up a delicate, lyrical picture of a gentle pre-war society, of Irish history and troubled Anglo-Irish relations, and of a delightful family. Above all, his story reverberates with the enchantment of falling in love and with the desolation of bereavement.

    She was brought up on a grey and impoverished council estate on the wrong side of town. But for her family, and many others, there was no right side. One parent was Catholic, the other was Protestant. In the space of one year they were forced out of two homes and when she was eleven a homemade petrol bomb was thrown through her bedroom window. Terror was in the very fabric of the city, and for families like Kerri’s, the ones who fell between the cracks of identity, it seemed there was no escape.In Thin Places, a mixture of memoir, history and nature writing, Kerri explores how nature kept her sane and helped her heal, how violence and poverty are never more than a stone’s throw from beauty and hope, and how we are, once again, allowing our borders to become hard, and terror to creep back in. Kerri asks us to reclaim our landscape through language and study, and remember that the land we fight over is much more than lines on a map, more than housing estates and parliament buildings – it will always be ours but, at the same time, it never really was.

    a superb book and it's not just for people interested in law; it tells you a lot about Ireland' Vincent Browne, TV3 The judges, the decisions, the rifts and the rivalries - the gripping inside story of the institution that has shaped Ireland. 'Combines painstaking research with acute analysis and intelligence' Colm Tóibín, Irish Times' Books of the Year'[Mac Cormaic] has done something unprecedented and done it with a striking maturity, balance and adroitness. He creates the intimacy necessary but never loses sight of the wider contexts; this is not just a book about legal history; it is also about social, political and cultural history ... [the Supreme Court] has found a brilliant chronicler in Ruadhan Mac Cormaic' Diarmaid Ferriter, Professor of Modern Irish History, UCD'Mac Cormaic quite brilliantly tells the story ... balanced, perceptive and fair ... a major contribution to public understanding' Donncha O'Connell, Professor of Law, NUIG, Dublin Review of Books'Compelling ... a remarkable story, told with great style' Irish Times'Authoritative, well-written and highly entertaining' Sunday TimesThe work of the Supreme Court is at the heart of the private and public life of the nation. Whether it's a father trying to overturn his child's adoption, a woman asserting her right to control her fertility, republicans fighting extradition, political activists demanding an equal hearing in the media, women looking to serve on juries, the state attempting to prevent a teenager ending her pregnancy, a couple challenging the tax laws, a gay man fighting his criminalization simply for being gay, a disabled young man and his mother seeking to vindicate his right to an education, the court's decisions can change lives.Now, having had unprecedented access to a vast number of sources, and conducted hundreds of interviews, including with key insiders, award-winning Irish Times journalist Ruadhan Mac Cormaic lifts the veil on the court's hidden world.The Supreme Court reveals new and surprising information about well-known cases. It exposes the sometimes fractious relationship between the court and the government. But above all it tells a story about people - those who brought the cases, those who argued in court, those who dealt with the fallout and, above all, those who took the decisions. Judges' backgrounds and relationships, their politics and temperaments, as well as the internal tensions between them, are vital to understanding how the court works and are explored here in fascinating detail.The Supreme Court is both a riveting read and an important and revealing account of one of the most powerful institutions of our state.Ruadhan Mac Cormaic is the former Legal Affairs Correspondent and Paris Correspondent of the Irish Times. He is now the paper's Foreign Affairs Correspondent.

    Numerous one-on-one conversations with Ozzy, Tony, Geezer, and Bill, as well as ten interviews with Ronnie James Dio, and additional interviews with supporting musicians such as Tony Martin, Ian Gillan, Glenn Hughes, Vinny Appice, and Neil Murray, make this full-colour retrospective a must for any fan. The drugs, drink, depression, and doom surrounding this band from the start have imbued songs like “The Wizard,” “Paranoid,” “Iron Man” “War Pigs,” “Children of the Grave” and “Heaven and Hell” with an almost supernatural importance among lovers of dark music. In the wider realm, full albums such as Master of Reality, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Sabotage, and Heaven and Hell show up with regularity on lists of greatest records of all time. Doom Let Loose explains how such classics came to be. It also deals with their tour history, documenting the places rocked, the bands who supported the Sabs, and most notably the trials and tribulations of the band and they tried to hold it together in the Satan-obsessed, drug-addled America of the Nixon era. Look for all manner of Sabbath photos and artefacts that make this examination of heavy metal’s fearsome foursome as feast for the eyes as well as the enquiring mind.

    James Joyce’s big blue book, Ulysses, ushered in the modernist era and changed the novel for all time. But the genius of Ulysses was also its danger: it omitted absolutely nothing. All of the minutiae of Leopold Bloom’s day, including its unspeakable details, unfold with careful precision in its pages. The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice immediately banned the novel as "obscene, lewd, and lascivious.” Joyce, along with some of the most important publishers and writers of his era, had to fight for years to win the freedom to publish it. The Most Dangerous Book tells the remarkable story surrounding Ulysses, from the first stirrings of Joyce’s inspiration in 1904 to its landmark federal obscenity trial in 1933.   Literary historian Kevin Birmingham follows Joyce’s years as a young writer, his feverish work on his literary masterpiece, and his ardent love affair with Nora Barnacle, the model for Molly Bloom. Joyce and Nora socialized with literary greats like Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Beach. Their support helped Joyce fight an array of anti-vice crusaders while his book was disguised and smuggled, pirated and burned in the United States and Britain. The long struggle for publication added to the growing pressures of Joyce’s deteriorating eyesight, finances and home life.   Salvation finally came from the partnership of Bennett Cerf, the cofounder of Random House, and Morris Ernst, a dogged civil liberties lawyer and founder of the ACLU. With their stewardship, the case ultimately rested on the literary merit of Joyce’s master work. The sixty-year-old judicial practices governing obscenity in the United States were overturned because a federal judge could get inside Molly Bloom’s head.   Birmingham’s archival work brings to light new information about both Joyce and the story surrounding Ulysses. Written for ardent Joyceans as well as novices who want to get to the heart of the greatest novel of the twentieth century, The Most Dangerous Book is a gripping examination of how the world came to say yes to Ulysses.

    This books tells their story.

    Robert Blair Mayne is still regarded as one of the greatest soldiers in the history of military special operations. He was the most decorated British soldier of the Second World War, receiving four DSOs, the Croix de Guerre, and the Legion d'honneur, and he pioneered tactics used today by the SAS and other special operations units worldwide. Rogue Warrior of the SAS tells the remarkable life story of "Colonel Paddy," whose exceptional physical strength and uniquely swift reflexes made him a fearsome opponent. But his unorthodox rules of war and his resentment of authority would deny him the ultimate accolade of the Victoria Cross. Drawing on personal letters and family papers, declassified SAS files and records, together with the Official SAS Diary compiled in wartime and eyewitness accounts, this is the true story of the soldier.

    As in his first trip with Alberto Granado, this second journey was an encounter with the roots of indigenous America, with the incipient people’s movements and all the beauty and suffering of a continent oppressed for centuries.“The name of the sidekick has changed from Alberto to Calica, but the trip is the same: two free-spirits spanning out over South America without knowing exactly what they're looking for or which way is north,” wrote Guevara in his travel diary.The two friends explore Bolivia, Perú and Ecuador, alternating their enthusiasm for travel and youthful antics with revealing discoveries about social and political reality in Latin America, in the end turning the trip into a profound journey of self-discovery that would change them forever.The book presents previously unpublished photos from Calica’s personal album that portray the childhood and youth of the two friends in the town of Alta Gracia in the Province of Córdoba, Argentina, as well as their trip together.Alberto Granado, friend of both Ernesto and Calica, prologues the book and finishes with these words:“Thank you, Calica, for having brought this breath of fresh air and showing us our friend just as he was, is and always will be: a man of flesh and blood.”

    

    From working with a double agent who betrays his friendship and exposes a top secret cross border operation, Terry McIntosh wrestles with his own doubts and fears while protecting the rights of others to live free. He was chosen from the ranks of long range reconnaissance training to serve with Special Forces Detachment A-team 414 in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam 1968-1969. The border camp conducted clandestine operations to observe and engage a growing Viet Cong armed force 15 miles across the line. The top secret mission is exposed after team members are accused of executing the double agent. It is believed that Terry McIntosh is the youngest soldier to serve with the Green Berets on an "A" team and earn the coveted Combat Badge. This is his story about the transition from boy to man in the jungles of Vietnam where he met himself for the first time with a sense of shame and honor.

    The dialogue crackles with hilarious, caustic putdowns as the indomitable Maggie deals with her feckless family and unwanted suitors. Everyone wants a part of Big Maggie and her property but she has other ideas.

    The author doesn't pull any punches describing the good, the bad, the funny and the just plain ridiculous of the Submarine Service. Besides a wealth of information about what it's like to serve on a submarine, you'll meet real life characters like Tongue, Snake and Button Butt John. Did submarines make them rude, crude, and crazy. Or does the Submarine Service act as a magnet for every nut in the Navy? One thing is sure, after two months underwater, and with their back pay in their back pocket, Sub Sailors are as wild as cowboys after a cattle drive. Bar the doors and hide your daughters. Every reader owes it to themselves to use Amazons "Look In" feature to take a peek inside this unique and entertaining book.

    The book follows individual operations where special forces, aircraft, and the latest surveillance technology are fused together - in order to capture key figures or simply take out an enemy stronghold.The books account is both gritty and graphical as it follows the SAS, battling at times against overwhelming odds in a hostile country. Fighting a war hardened enemy with years of experience fighting occupying forces. Even these elite soldiers with advanced weaponry and immense fire support at their disposal are put to the ultimate test of skill and courage fighting in the 'Stan.'

    Like William Clarke Quantrill and "Bloody Bill" Anderson, Samuel Hildebrand was a proud Missouri bushwhacker. In this long out of print book, Hildebrand describes raids and executions his band of men carried out. He remained at the end of the war and unreconstructed rebel and fervent racist. Like many of his southern brethren who fought, he never owned slaves but kept a captured black man with him after the war. This self-serving but fascinating account is a valuable addition to the canon of Civil War literature. In it, Hildebrand claims that others have tried to tell his story but have gotten it wrong, so he has a notarized statement by prominent men included as verification of authenticity. Every memoir of the American Civil War provides us with another view of the catastrophe that changed the country forever. For the first time ever, this long-out-of-print book is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE or download a sample.