Book Description

The definitive biography of William Butler Yeats. The most influential poet of his age, Yeats eluded the grasp of many who sought to explain him. In this classic critical examination of the poet, Richard Ellmann strips away the masks of his subject: occultist, senator of the Irish Free State, libidinous old man, and Nobel Prize winner. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Biograph Master
Ellmann was only 30 when he published this in 1948, less than 10 years after Yeats's death; he was the first biographer to see Yeats's papers in their chaotic entirety. What an astounding job! You'd think this would read like a warm-up for his later magisterial biographies of Joyce and Wilde, but "The Man and the Masks" holds its own against those works, giving a sensitive, economical portrait of an unusually fractured poet.

Ellmann stresses Yeats's life-long effort to forge his thoughts into a unified system in the teeth of inbred skepticism, shyness and vacillation. He draws a discreet curtain over the sexual parts of Yeats's life but compensates with a keen understanding of the courage it took for this diffident, ill-read & dreamy man to make himself by fits and starts into a modern poet. My favorite parts of the book were the sections where Ellmann compares earlier drafts of the poems to the printed versions, showing just how hard-won Yeats's genius was. He tempers a critical eye towards Yeats's excesses--the wild mysticism, the Fascist sympathies, the arrogant public demeanor--with an understanding of Yeats's deep need for masks. According to Ellmann, Yeats's theories and systems weren't dogmas so much as postures he assumed to fulfill his own desire for a certainty of belief he never quite attained. Ellmann shows how that drive shaped the poems and ultimately rescued them from the deadness certitude would have brought. A classic study and an excellent starting-point for further reading on Yeats's life and work.

Admirable, but not Perfect
Though I have the greatest admiration for Ellman, I must say that this critical biography of Yeats has a few too many blindspots, is too vague and shapeless in its outline of Yeats' life, to satisfy entirely. Roy Foster's two-volume account is ultimately preferable because far more complete.

Casting a Cold Eye
THE definitive, open, and engaging study of the man T.S.Eliot declared the greatest poet of his age. Richard Ellman is no longer with us, but this is a monument of Yeats biography and criticism, the book which all subsequent biographers try to rewrite. The text itself, written as it was amidst a flurry of uncollected papers in the forties and with the co-operation of W.B.'s widow George, is understandably reticent about some elements of the poet's private life, notably his early lovers and extra-marital affairs; but the introduction printed with this new edition fills in many of the blanks, and gives the reasoning for Ellman's assertion that Yeats's affair with Maud Gonne was indeed finally consummated, confirming a suspicion hitherto based only on ambiguous references in letters and the poem 'A Man Young and Old'. Most of all, however, it is Ellman's sensitive and insightful treatment of Yeats's at once shy and self-possessed nature that impresses; the writer will never have a more accurate critic, and the man never a more sincere and biting appraisal of his contradictions. This is the place to start if you are interested in Yeats: you may not find the book or the man that you were expecting, an easy dreamy life of lost women and lake isles, but the portrait is truer, and the artistic genius more clearly delineated than in any other book on the subject, and there have been many. Ellman went on to write the definitive lives of James Joyce and Oscar Wilde; that his first essay in literary biography stands comparison with these is its own testament. ... Read more

Book Description

This is the story of a boy's growing up on the Great Blasket, a sparsely inhabited, Gaelic-speaking island off the coast of Ireland.It tells of the simple life of a society that no longer exists, with a humor and poetry refreshingly remote from the modern world that replaced it. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

The masterpiece of Irish literature
This is an extraordinary book, described by the well-know author E.M. Forster as "here is the egg of a seabird - lovely, perfect and laid this very morning".

The author, Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, is an Irish-speaking boy growing up on the Great Blasket Island (An Blascaod Mór). He describes his childhood in the twenties on this 100% Irish-speaking island in Co. Kerry. The population of the island never reached 200, and life there was very archaic - resembling the society in Europe thousands of years ago. Nowhere else in Europe did the shear joy of speaking and love of words live on as here, where thousands of pages of folklore has been collected as well. This love of the language is obvious in this vivid book, in which Muiris presents an affectionate, lively and interesting account of a way of life that no longer is.

Despite being published 70 years ago, the book still feels fresh and manages to blend fond memories and humour in an extraordinary way. This is definitely THE book to buy for anyone interested in the Irish way of life.

musha...what a great book!
Twenty Years A-Growing by Maurice O'Sullivan is one heck of a "coming of age" story. I'd never even heard of it until a friend of mine told me that he was reading it. I'm sure glad he did. This is a great book!

I've actually read several coming of age stories recently. I didn't plan to...it just kind of occurred that way. Some of them were really good (David Copperfield by Dickens being one of them); but none of them, Copperfield included, spoke to my heart like Twenty Years A-Growing.

Twenty Years A-Growing was translated into English from Gaelic. I personally find this astounding. They (whoever "they" might be) say a book always loses something in translation. Yet Twenty Years absolutely sings in English...the translation is so powerful that the original must truly be a thing of beauty.

It is an autobiographical tale of growing up in the Blasket Islands off the coast of Ireland around the time of the first world war. For me at least, it was a thing of wonder to be able to enter into this world which has since moved on. It is a story told in a wonderfully simple yet almost lyrically beautiful way. Each chapter is a story in itself. The story as a whole slowly ingrains itself upon your heart and mind.

I felt an affinity with Maurice and his friend Thomas. The adventures they find themselves in ring true even as they entertain the reader. Likewise, the character of the grandfather in particular now feels like an old friend to me now. I particularly appreciated some of the wisdom he espouses to Maurice.

I dare anyone to read this book and not be charmed by the lives of these wonderful people who lived almost a hundred years ago in a kind of societal setting that seems all at once foreign, yet somehow more sane than today's world of constant "time management" in pursuit of hollow "muchness" and "manyness."

It does not happen often that I do not to want a book to end. I usually approach the end of a book with satisfaction. Rarely am I left wanting more. Yet that was the case with Twenty Years A-Growing. It is a truly special book.

Fascinating book about a life style gone by
Twenty Years A-Growing, or Fiche Bliain ag Fás in its original Irish, is a humorous and well written book about the sometimes hard life at the great western island, An Blascaod Mór, off the cost of Ireland. It tells about the everyday of the islanders in the beginning of the century in a surprisingly modern and lively way. The language of the Island was Irish, and although the Great Blasket is now abandoned, the Irish language still lives on in the mainland parishes in this area. I strongly recommend this book to everyone interested in Ireland, its culture, the Irish language or readerswho just want a fun and good book. I myself have only read the whole of it in its Irish original, but the passes I've read in English shows a well-done translation

A spectacularly innocent and beautifully written book.
I first read this wonderful book when on vacation in County Kerry, Ireland. I was only 13 years old at the time but the book entranced me because of its humour, sensitivity and overwhelming innocence. The author describes the first twenty years of his life growing up on an isolated island (The Great Blasket) off the southwest coast of Ireland .

Life on the island was so very different to that in the rest of Europe. Gaelic (Irish) was the language used by the community with no English used at all. The book was originally published in Irish and then translated into English whilst preserving all the old colloquial expressions (e.g. "your soul to the devil, that's talk in the air, the sun was hot enough to break stones, My love forever Eileen!" etc.). Life on the island was simple in the extreme with the community living on fish they caught themselves and food they grew on their sparse amounts of land. The book is a rich narrative of many stories and events, thoughts and dreams, humor and sadness within the "riotous beauty" that is South Kerry and the Blasket islands.

The writer did not intend for his book to be read by a wider audience than his own people and that is the book's central beauty. Read it if you want to discover a lost world of innocence, ancient tales, fear, bravery, sadness, hilarity and splendid isolation.

Magnificent work in the old tradition of oral story telling.
Twenty Years A-Growing is a delightful collection of stories put together to form a novel. It is not great action or plot that draws one to this book. It is the shear joy of the art of the story teller. This book is a fine example of the ancient tradition of story telling. When a "wanderer" visits the author's house, his grandfather says, "he who travels has tales to tell." The stranger is invited to pull up a chair to the fire and help "shorten the night" with his tales. Good stories do not require a TV or a radio, or for that matter, even a book. Good stories only require a good story teller and a good audience. Twenty Years A-Growing is good story telling ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Powerful.
I have to honestly admit, I've gone back and forth trying to decide whether or not this book is on the level. The premise is incredible-an SAS trooper and an IRA member falling in love. As I've thought over all the information in this book, it does seem plausible to me that it's the real deal. As an SAS trooper, Graham is incredibly sympathetic to the Irish. But, at the same time, he pulls no punches when describing the methodology of the IRA. At the same time, the information I've found on Mairead Farrell isn't contradicted by his novel, and given the amount of information the IRA puts on the web, there would definitely be some rebuttle if Graham was full of it. Graham gives a pained account of the Gibraltar incident-which gives the book more credence. An SAS trooper simply toeing the line (i.e. writing propagnda) wouldn't have cast doubt on the integrity of that operation.

So. What do we have? Probably the most intense pair of star crossed lovers since Romeo and Juliet. Also, we have a small slice of the war between the Brits and the IRA.

Personally, I haven't read anything this powerful in God knows how long. (If you suspend disbelief). I recommend this to everyone.

Violent Delights
This is one of the most sad and unusual love storys I have ever read. For an SAS soldier to fall madly in love with an IRA killer is so unlikely but here is the true story of such an event. It not only divulges the love story but also gives great detail of bombings and shootings that took place in Northern Ireland in the 70's and 80's. I just wish there could have been a follow up to the story but that was not to be...... to find out why you'll have to read the book and I guarantee you, you wont be disappointed.

ok
The writing is fairly pedestrian and the author fails to really capture the reader. The book deals more with the number of times the two characters got together than with the politics of N. Ireland.

Even thought the writer is a former SAS soldier, he reports one atrocity of the British in Northern Ireland but fails to truely acknowledge the discrimination or convey the deep divisions found here.

Political Heartbreaker!
This book may not be the most well-written, but it gives the reader plenty of insight as to how the troubles of Northern Ireland escalated in the 1970's. It is also gives a detailed and painfully honest account of a love affair that should never have been between a naive, romantic, Irish nationalist, and a deceptive British SAS soldier (the author). Though the author portrays his lover as a would-be killer, in the end he reveals the British government's role in the tragic events of that time. For those with an interest in politics and romance, go for this one.

I enjoyed it
If you are looking for a book about a SAS commando with stories of intrigue then this is not the book for you. If you are looking for a love relationship between two people who are supposed to be enemies, I highly recommend it. This story tears at your heart strings and makes you question who's side you're on. ... Read more

Book Description

The renowned Irish medium, author and entrepreneur recounts how her powerful psychic gifts steered the course of her amazing life and touched the lives of so many others--both known and unknown. First published in 1949, these memoirs are now reprinted with photos and personal "remembrances" from friends and associates in parapsychology, in science, in business and in the arts. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A Must Read for Anyone Who's Interested in the Paranormal
For anyone interested in paranormal phenomena, this is a great book for you. Eileen J. Garrett founded the Parapsychology Foundation (based in New York City) in 1951. The Parapsychology Foundation is a non-profit organization that supports the scientific exploration of psychic phenomena and still exists today. This book is her autobiography. There is so much mystery surrounding psychics, and Adventures in the Supernormal is a very insightful look into the life of someone with psychic powers.

Garrett knew at a young age that she was different. In her preface she writes, "I have a gift, a capacity--a delusion, if you will--which is called 'psychic.'...living with and utilizing this psychic capacity long ago inured me to a variety of epithets...In short, I have been called many things: from a charlatan to a miracle woman. I am, at least, neither of these. In this book I hope to tell the reader what I am. It is an answer to literally hundreds of requests for information concerning supernormal perception and how it functions."

She begins with her Irish childhood, where she was "exhausted in a world that did not understand or believe" her and continues on through her life to tell of her marriage, her businesses (she was a smart, entrepreneurial woman in a time when that wasn't very common), her divorce, and her move to New York. Garrett was one of the first people to objectively study parapsychology and in her lifetime she made huge contributions to psychic research. She clears up "psychic research" by saying that it's not "spiritualism" or "religion," but rather, it's the "scientific study of the human personality beyond the threshold of what man calls his conscious mind." Her book covers her experience with and knowledge of ESP, clairvoyance, psychometry, telepathy and precognition, and she emphasizes the need for more objective study and research, with an eventual unification of science and religion - a necessary development if we want to truly understand and express psychic powers.

Adventures in the Supernormal is an intriguing look into one of America's primary and highly regarded psychics, and I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in paranormal phenomena. ... Read more

Book Description

The author argues that it was in fact MacColla and not Montrose who was the true architect of the year of Victories, and that without his Highland ally, Montrose's blunders would have doomed him to disaster, thus presenting a compelling and radical reappraisal of Scottish history during the crucial years of the 1640s. As MacColla's actions were unwittingly to lead his people and culture to ruin, so his own career ended in chaos when, despite leading his own troops in a victorious charge, an incompetent general led him to defeat and death at Knocknanuss in Ireland.

Superbly written, Highland Warrior is a compelling and dramatic sweep through some of the most eventful years in Scottish history, told in a text both authoritative and highly readable. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Alasdair Mac Colla
Stevenson looks at the history of the Gaelic fringe of Ireland and Scotland in the seventeenth century with a refreshingly unromantic eye. Gone are the quaint stories of Highland laddies, and villanous Cromwellians. Stevenson's "Highland Warrior" is thick with intrigue. Alasdair Mac Colla emerges from these pages looking super-human, but certainly not heroic in the conventional sense. However, in the fallen world of the seventeenth century, Mac Colla and his sidekick Manus Ruadh O'Cahan may be the closest one might ever get to heroic figures. They are, at least, extremely interesting individuals. This is a magnificent book, and it is a must read for any student of Irish or Scottish history. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

for those who want a more in-depth studies of Scotland
Everyone(thanks to Braveheart) has now heard of William Wallace, Robert the Bruce and Longshanks. However, there was another big powerbroker in the struggles for Scotland's independence: Clan Comyn. John de Balliol was part of the Clan, and they ruled nearly 2/3s of Scotland during this period. When the choice for a King of Scotland was made after the death of Alexander and the Maid of Norway, it came down to two contenders: Robert the Competitor (Bruce's grandfather) and John de Balliol...both descendants from David Earl of Huntington,one from Clan Bruce and one from Clan Comyn. The Comyns were the powerbrokers of Balliol's short reign and were the largest impediment to Bruce's rising. And in the end, it took the murder of John Comyn in Greyfriars Abbey in 1314 to finally put Bruce in control of the country he would have to fight to rule.
But little focus is really paid to this very powerful Clan that influenced not only Scotland, but England during this period. Alan Young finally brings Clan Comyn out of the shadows and places there in their rightful position as the most powerful family in Scotland in the 13th Century.

Young covers the rising of Bruce and Wallace and how it was impacted or changed by Clan Comyn; follows through to the Comyns roles as the later Guardians of Scotland; their role in John de Balliols Kingship; up through the murder of John Comyn by Bruce or his supports and the fallout.

Maybe a little more history than the casual read would enjoy, but for someone interested in ALL the history and understanding what happened then, this is a MUST!! ... Read more

Book Description

Margaret of Anjou was a vengeful and violent woman, or so we have been told, whose vindictive spirit fuelled the fifteenth-century dynastic conflict, the Wars of the Roses. In Shakespeare's rendering she becomes an adulterous queen who mocks her captive enemy, Richard, duke of York, before killing him in cold blood.Shakespeare's portrayal has proved to be remarkably resilient, because Margaret's queenship lends itself to such an assessment. In 1445, at the age of fifteen, she was married to the ineffectual Henry VI, a move expected to ensure peace with France and an heir to the throne. Eight years later, while she was in the later stages of her only pregnancy, Henry suffered a complete mental collapse that left him catatonic for roughly a year and a half: Margaret came to the political forefront. In the aftermath of the king's illness, she became an indefatigable leader of the Lancastrian loyalists in their struggle against their Yorkist opponents.Margaret's exercise of power was always fraught with difficulty: as a woman, her effective power was dependent upon her invocation of the authority of her husband or her son. Her enemies lost no opportunity to charge her with misconduct of all kinds. More than five hundred years after Margaret's death this examination of her life and career allows a more balanced and detached view. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Analysis, not biography
First off, let me say that this book is not a biography of Margaret of Anjou (1492-1549). What this book is is a look at what it meant to be Queen of England in the Middle Ages, and how Margaret worked within and around the roles of woman and queen. The book defines the queen's prescribed roles as bringer of political advantages, impartial intercessor with the king, and bearer of an heir to the throne. The author shows that Margaret was careful to live up to these roles, to the best of her ability, and only found herself forced out of them by the power politics surrounding her husband's incapacity and the subsequent War of the Roses.

Overall, I found this to be a good book, but not a great one. The author does not give any unnecessary background on any of the people she discusses, and indeed the academic analysis nature of the book gives it a choppy, uneven feel. The lack of background means that you *must* be familiar with the history of Margaret of Anjou, or you will quickly find yourself lost amid the analysis. Also, as this work is written as a scholarly analysis, it is very dry and makes poor bedtime reading.

So, if you are looking for a history of Margaret of Anjou, then I recommend that you look elsewhere. But, if you know about Margaret and want to understand her better as Queen of England, then you should read this book. Overall, I give this book a rather guarded recommendation. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Although Edna O'Brien has never trafficked in James Joyce'shead-over-heels brand of high modernism, she does have a couple of characteristics in common with her great predecessor. After all, both authors engaged in a profoundly ambivalent excoriation of their native Ireland. And while O'Brien's sexual politics can make Joyce seem like a fusty Edwardian by comparison, both novelists got a certain amount of flack for their erotic frankness. So this latest match from the Penguin Lives series seems like a good one--and largely lives up to its promise. O'Brien makes no pretense of competing with Richard Ellmann's immense, magisterial portrait. Instead she has concocted in James Joyce something that resembles one of her own novels: a spirited, lyrical, and acerbic narrative that just happens to feature the author of Ulysses in the starring role.

Having experienced the constrictions of Irish life firsthand, O'Brien is particularly good on Joyce's downwardly mobile childhood. Was his resulting hatred of his native land exaggerated? Apparently not:

No one who has not lived in such straitened and hideous circumstances can understand the battering of that upbringing. All the more because they had come down in the world, a tumble from semi-gentility, servants, a nicely laid table, cut glasses, a piano, the accoutrements of middle-class life, relegated to the near slums in Mountjoy Square, the gaunt spectral mansions in which children sat like mice in the gaping doorways.

Reviews (13)

A Joycean Primer
As is almost consistently the case, the series of biographies produced under the collection of Penguin Lives has once again succeeded in providing a palatable doorway through which the hungry but busy reader can find the substance of an important if historically tough writer or artist. Edna O'Brien, herself an accomplished writer, here provides us with a fellow Irishman's view of the incredibly important writer James Joyce. Though most of us have at least read his 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' and have seen plays and film adaptations of some of his other works, few of us feel we understand this complexly brilliant mind enough to say that approaching 'Ulysses' or 'Finnegan's Wake' would be easy reading. O'Brien gives us not only the chronology of Joyce's life, she also picks up on individual instances in his youth and manhood that served as fodder for his detailed novels of his Irish heritage. The writing is brisk, acerbic, challenging, and ultimately rewardingly educational. Finish this brief history and you most probably will run to the book shelf for another go at the master!

A perceptive account of a monster of a writer
Irish writer Edna O'Brien's brief (179 page) biography of James Joyce was aimed at people like me who are curious about Joyce's life, but not curious enough to undertake Richard Ellman's definitive but massive biography. O'Brien venerates Joyce's writing, but recognizes the high cost to most everyone who had any contact with Joyce.

Although she argues (without convincing me) that Joyce was not a misogynist, she does not attempt to defend him from being viewed as a monster; instead, she answers her question "Do writers have to be such monsters in order to create? I believe that they do."

O'Brien provides interesting responses to Joyce's life and lifework. Hard-core Joyceans will already have processed Ellman's biography--regarded by some as the best biography of any writer ever written. The somewhat curious have a fine guide in O'Brien. Her book is generally readable, and I am inclined to trust her sense (as a novelist, as an Irish novelist) of what in Joyce's fiction is autobiographical.

The volume is an excellent match of biographer and subject, like Edmund White's biographical meditation on Marcel Proust that began the series of Penguin Brief Lives, a welcome antidote to the mountains of details that make so many biographies daunting.

a great writer on a great writer
Biographies in this series are the perfect fun size. Light, but long enough to have a lot of real stuff in them, more than a mere introduction.

The very first sentence of this book invites you into Joyce with an imitation of his writing style, & after that Edna O'Brien shares generously & mellifluously her great understanding of the man, his life, & his work, drawing on scholarly commentary of his books & from the journals & letters of him & the people around him so that you know how they all felt about his life & their lives in themselves & for the purposes of this biography in relation to him. It's so well-written & so interesting -- what a life he had, crazy as he was, that -- I could hardly put it down. Edna O'Brien's great interest in him comes across truly.

Short but sweet
I read this book at the Jersey shore. Joyce's life was as bizarre as his fiction. This book gives you an insight into what Joyce was trying to do with "Ulysses" and later "Finegan's Wake." Of course, the Ellmann bio is still the definitive. This is a great little read with sand and roasted peanuts.

A Singular Genius
This is one of several volumes in the Penguin Lives Series, each of which written by a distinguished author in her or his own right. Each provides a concise but remarkably comprehensive biography of its subject in combination with a penetrating analysis of the significance of that subject's life and career. I think this is a brilliant concept. My only complaint (albeit a quibble) is that even an abbreviated index is not provided. Those who wish to learn more about the given subject are directed to other sources.

When preparing to review various volumes in this series, I have struggled with determining what would be of greatest interest and assistance to those who read my reviews. Finally I decided that a few brief excerpts and then some concluding comments of my own would be appropriate.

On Joyce and Ireland: "Of all the great Irish writers, Joyce's relationship with his country remains the most incensed and yet the most meditative. Beckett, a much more cloistered man, was unequivocal; he made France his home and eventually wrote in French and though his elegiac works carry the breath of his native land, he did not expect Foxrock, his birthplace, to be etched in the consciousness of the world. Joyce did. He determined to reinvent the city where he had been marginalized, laughed at and barred from literary circles. he would be the poet of his race." (page 15)

On criticisms of his portrayal of Dublin: Joyce "said he was not to be blamed for the odor of ash pits and rotted cabbage and offal in these stories [i.e. in Dubliners] because that was how he saw his city. 'We are foolish, comic, motionless, corrupted, yet we are worthy of sympathy too,' he laughed haughtily and added that if Ireland were to deny that sympathy to its characters, the rest of the world would not. In this he was mistaken." (page 78)

On his deteriorating health: "The strains were beginning to show. he had endocrine treatment for his arthritis, had to have all his teeth removed and was fitted with permanent plates. His eyesight so worsened that he had only one-seventh normal vision. He was given iodine leeches for his bad eye but soon it was clear that they would have to operate." (page 130)

On his enigmatic nature: "The truth is that the Joyce [others] saw was a fraction of the inner man. No one knew Joyce, only himself, no one could. His imagination was meteoric, his mind ceaseless in the accruing of knowledge, words crackling in his head, images crowding in on him 'like the shades at the entrance to the underworld.' What he wanted to do was to wrest the secret from life and that could only be done through language because, as he said, the history of people is the history of language." (pages 165-166)

As is also true of the other volumes in the "Penguin Lives" series, this one provides all of the essential historical and biographical information but its greatest strength lies in the extended commentary, in this instance by Edna O'Brien. She also includes a brief but sufficient "Bibliography" for those who wish to learn more about Joyce. I hope these brief excerpts encourage those who read this review to read O'Brien's biography. It is indeed a brilliant achievement. ... Read more

Book Description

This is the story of a place, the kind of joint you don't find around much anymore, a spot where people wander in once and return for a lifetime.

Little Chapel on The River

Nestled along the banks of the Hudson River directly across from the United States Military Academy at West Point sits the rural town of Garrison, New York, home to Guinan's -- a legendary Irish drinking hole and country store. While searching for a place to live and a temporary haven following the September 11th attacks, Manhattan journalist Wendy Bounds was delivered to Guinan's doorstep by a friend. And a visit that began with one beer turned into a life-changing encounter.

Captivated by the bar's charismatic but ailing owner, Bounds uprooted herself and moved to tiny Garrison. There she became one of the rare female regulars at the old pub and was quickly swept up by its motley characters and charms. What follows is a riveting journey as her fate, and that of Guinan's, unfolds. Told with sensitivity, humor and an unflinching eye, Little Chapel on the River is a love story about a place -- and the people who bring it to life.

Along Bounds's journey you'll meet the people of Guinan's: Jim Guinan himself, the stubborn high priest of this little chapel who spins rich tales of the town's robber barons, castles and mythological swans that feed at his front door; his grown children, whose duty to their father, and the town, have kept Guinan's up and running against immeasurable odds; Fitz, a tough-talking Vietnam vet who eventually takes the author under his wing; Tom Endres, who first rowed to the bar illegally as a cadet and who returned as a full-fledged colonel in the U.S Army; Walter, the kindhearted and neurotic next-door neighbor who torches dandelions with his lighter; and Lou-Lou, the overweight doe-eyed hound and the most faithful four-legged parishioner at the pub.

This beautifully written, deeply personal and brilliantly insightful book is as much about remembering to value the past as it is about learning to seize the present. Filled with stories of joy and sorrow, of universal family struggles with loyalty, love, betrayal and redemption, this work ultimately brims with hope as Bounds expertly captures a nostalgic slice of quintessential American life. And while chronicling the pub's fight to endure and her own search for a simpler way of life, she shares how and why the spirit moves those who come to worship in this little chapel on the river.

Book Description

Half a century ago, Norman Jeffares wrote the definitive biography of W.B. Yeats, which was subsequently published in a revised edition in 1990 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the poet's death. The present volume, a re-issue of the 1990 edition with a new introduction and bibliography, is an account of Yeats's life and work, together with a fascinating collection of letters, photographs and poetry. ... Read more

Book Description

The World of Bede is an engaging and accessible introduction to the writings and intellectual development of the venerable Bede (d. 735), first historian of the English and one of the greatest scholars of the Middle Ages. Originally published in 1970 and out of print for many years, the book remains a minor classic of historical writing, now made available again for the enjoyment of all those interested in the early medieval world. A new preface and supplementary bibliography by Michael Lapidge have brought the book up to date. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A very enjoyable read about the remarkable Dark Age scholar.
This reprint of the 1970 classic provides a very accessible introduction into the intellectual background and writings of the venerable Bede. It is based on the written history of Bede and his times and mentions but does not rely on archealogical evidence to support its description of this early flowering of enlightenment in a dark time.

The text has held up well in the past 30 years and it provides great insight into the history of the English as Bede knew it, Bede's intellectual environment in which he wrote his works on various topics, and, of course, on the history of the church in England.

It reads as a tour guide book to the physical and mental territory in which Bede lived and wrote. Not too hagiographic - but it does assume at least a passing familiarity with Bede's more famous works. ... Read more

Book Description

Charles Carroll of Carrollton is most often remembered as the sole Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. In this monumental study of the Carrolls in Ireland and America, that act vindicates a family's determination to triumph without compromising lineage and faith.

Ronald Hoffman peels back layer after layer of Carroll family history, from dispossession in Ireland to prosperity and prominence in America.Driven to emigrate by England's devastating anti-Catholic policies, the first Carroll brought to Maryland an iron determination to reconstitute his family and fortune.He found instead an increasingly militant Protestant society that ultimately disenfranchised Catholics and threatened their wealth and property.Confronting religious antagonisms like those that had destroyed their Irish ancestors, this Carroll and his descendants founded a fortune--and a dynasty that risked everything by allying with the American Revolutionary cause.

Meeting each crisis with a tenacious will to survive and prevail, the Carrolls earned an esteemed place in the new nation.Hoffman balances private lives against their contentious public role in American history.The journey from Irish rebels to American revolutionaries shaped and shattered the Carrolls--and then remade them into one of the first families of the Republic. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Eye-Opening History of Colonial and Revolutionary Maryland
Ronald Hoffman is an excellent historian who has brought great knowledge of Chesapeake social and cultural history to this biographical work that places three generations of the Carroll family within their colonial context.It is a wonderful biography that gets the reader into the minds and lives of these three Charles Carroll's. But for me the best thing was the number of times it made me think, "Oh, that's how it was." I have read enough colonial history to know that there were lots of tenant laborers and not just slaves in the region, to know that Catholic Maryland quickly became Anglican Maryland, and to know that the Revolution was not just about ideas but also about social change.Ronald Hoffman's narrative, however, really brings these facts home.His book is not about any one of these issues in particular, but in telling the story of three generations of Carroll's in Maryland he brings home the greater circumstances of the colony better than many historians who have set out to make a case for one of the above arguments, or many of the other fascinating takes on early Chesapeake society contained in this highly readable book.I have not read any book lately that I enjoyed more.

Rigorous Analysis Yields Engaging View of Colonial Life
I was originally attracted to this book out of a simple curiosity about the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence (Charles Carroll outlived Adams and Jefferson by about six years, or about 56 years after 1776!).On a deeper level, I hoped to learn more about the kind of early capitalist that would be attracted to signing on to the American Revolution in general.What this book helped me discover was a family that had over time become focused, almost obsessed, with making a buck under fairly adverse circumstances (namely, continuing in their Roman Catholic faith that made it difficult for them to thrive, even in an enclave as seemingly sympathetic as colonial Maryland, with its relatively large Catholic population).But when the time came for this family to rise above its simple wealth building and to champion the cause of the Revolution, it did indeed rise to the occasion, however brief and painful the process might be.(Hoffman attends to both the private and public lives of the Carrolls.)The history of the Carrolls is a part of the history of the magic that was the American Revolution. It is not surprising that the book ends abruptly with the death of Charles Carroll's father and his wife, about 10 days apart from one another in 1782 (though there is a brief summing up of Carroll's remaining 50 years and the attention attracted by his death in 1832).The story is told, the dynasty pretty much complete.

What's the book like?At times it seems downright willfully prosaic, and the story proceeds much like a carefully written doctoral dissertation - all conclusions fully supported and made in as logical a context as possible, all contentions politically correct for our time.Hoffman's goal is of course to be scholarly and thorough, not to be entertaining or controversial.Thus the sweep of this history must emerge and coalesce in the mind of the reader.Leave being beaten over the head with the broader conclusions inherent in the narrative to more popularly written histories.

Suffice it to say, if you're a municipal library and you need to beef up your Revolutionary War material, this is a prime buy.If you're a true history buff, this would be an excellent choice to work into your reading list. It has the effect of immersing you into the spirit of the times and providing you with detail you could not have imagined you would find interesting (but you do).If you're a casual reader, just be advised - this is heavy stuff.It's not an easy read, but it is ultimately a rewarding one. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

The Ancient Gael
This is a profound book full of fascinating historical data on one of the most complex characters of ancient Irish history. Much of what the author writes is of necessity speculation but he also has researched into the history of the O'Neills & the old gaelic Chieftain order. The result is a facinating drama from the pages of ancient Irish history presented in a most dramatic & colourful manner. Personally I believe here is a story that could transfer the world of cinema & rival & surpass Braveheart in its epic scale & mesmerising characters.There is firstly the young O'Neill born into the most eminent of all Irish families, suddenly orphaned & at risk from his own people. Forced to flee he is taken in by the English & raised to be their pawn. In time he grows to manhood, returns to his people & claims all that is his. At first he has the support of the English as they pit Irish against Irish but eventually he outgrows them & becomes instead the most dangerous foe the Elizabethan armies have ever encountered.He scores victory after vistory over the English, culminating with his destruction of their great army at The Battle of the Yellow Ford. Unfortunately for O'Neill English resources far outweigh his as he well knows & a single defeat will spell his ruin. This comes inevitably at the battle of Kinsale & then all are left to mourn not just the passing of the Ancient Gael & its great Lords but the entrenchment of the English in Ireland which resulted in such pleasures as the Penal Times, 1798, The Great Famine, the War of Independence & today's Troubles in Northern Ireland. All can be traced back to that single defeat at Kinsale. I rate this book as by far the most significant work that O'Faolain ever wrote & believe it should be compulsory for all Irish History students. One curious aside is the comparison between this period of Irish history & the Indian wars in the USA. Certain characters have an uncanny resemblance, Sitting Bull & Hugh O'Neill; Crazy Horse & Hugh O'Donnell; Mountjoy & Sherman(?). Also the desperate struggle to maintain an ancient way of life & the realisation on the part of the indigenous peoples that theirs was a hopeless battle & that eventually a single defeat would bring their end. Yet these people believed strongly enough in their culture to fight for it & as an Irishman I am proud that O'Neill & O'Donnell fought their great foes rather than going quietly into the night. A great book.

Hugh O'Neill - The Last Irish King
I read this book because I am an O'Neill and wanted to learn more about myheritage.What I came away with is a better understanding of the historyof the conflict between Ireland and England, that Ireland was in factEngland's first colony and that a man named Hugh O'Neill nearly endedEngland's world colonization before it began.Enlightening also is theview into 16th century European culture and politics.This book is apleasure to read for it's colorful descriptions of characters and settingsas well as it's glimspe into historical events that are not oftendescribed. ... Read more

Book Description

In this magisterial study of the life and work of St. Anselm, Sir Richard Southern provides the definitive study of one of the most complex and fascinating philosophical minds in Christian history. St. Anselm brings together all the elements of a man whose intensely concentrated search for God filled all the phases and aspects of his life and work. Nothing in Anselm's thinking was simply ordinary or typical of his age. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Excellent!
Saint Anselm (of Bec and Canterbury) and William the Conqueror (of Normandy and England) were near-contemporaries. Each radically redefined what it meant to be a European. This book explores that process. I found it startling to read, but very satisfying. ... Read more

Book Description

This memoir weaves an astonishingly detailed tapestry of life in the northwest of Ireland in a period just beyond the grasps of living memory. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

A lyrical remembrance of life in County Donegal
The last of his name, says Charles McGlinchey, who, old and heirless, revisits his life with a local schoolmaster. So long as someone reads his memoirs though, McGlinchey ensures the family name will endure. His book reads with fireside lyricism and so effectively captures a man and his times. It is unique not in subject but in the breadth of history and in the narrator's ease of storytelling. In just over 100 pages, McGlinchey transports us to a misty, nearly forgotten Irish past that, though shadowed beneath modernity, lives in the recess of his mind. He reminisces on all matters, with one memory unfolding into several more and those into yet more.Among the varied subjects, he recollects his family and home life, his job as a weaver, American emigration, local legends, popular spells and cures, and favorite pastimes. It is the arresting quality of local life in a small Irish community that makes this book such an enjoyable one. McGlinchey's ability to reach back generations and decades and to extract from them histories and individual stories not only astounds but more importantly it reveals an intimate portrait that should not be so soon forgotten.

It's like sitting around a turf fire listening to stories
I am in the early stages of writing a book about life in County Donegal during the 19th century. This book is one of a few primary sources that describe what life was like for the people in this county.

The book is superbly produced-- from the book design to its typefaces, it's beautifully executed. Considering how this material was obtained, the book is well edited. To me reading the book is like sitting around a turf fire in Ireland, listening to a very old man lovingly describe a time that was long since past. He mentions many people and places, mostly within the parish of Inishowen. One thing I would have liked to see is an index. Without an index it's difficult to determine if an ancestor is mentioned in the book.

The book contains many Irish words and common phrases that were in use at the time. The book also contains songs and poems in Irish (with English translations) that perhaps are not recorded anywhere else. Much of what he recounts was part of the Oral Tradition of the countryside.

In some ways reading this book brought sadness to my heart. My great-grandparents were born in Donegal around 1820. This book describes some of the hardships that they had to endure. It chronicles a way of life, and a people that are no more. McGlinchey speaks to this regarding the Irish language, "Down to my young days there was nothing spoken in this parish at fair or chapel or gathering of any kind but Irish.... The English language came in greatly in my own time and in the one generation Irish went away like the snow off the ditches."

Life in Donegal
This little book is a fascinating read and a must have for anyone with Irish ancestry.It was narrated by Charles MacGlinchey, whose family moved from the Finn Valley in Donegal to the Inishowen Peninsula and settled in Clonmany parish, where Charles McGlinchey was the last of his family, hence the title of the book.It's chock full of Donegal folklore, including tales of poteen stills, revenue men, men on their banishment, the famine, immigrants to America, landlords and tenants, kidnapped women, hedge schools and fighting sticks.Charles McGlinchey was born in 1861 and died in 1954.His life covered the period when most of our Irish ancestors were crossing the Atlantic in small ships with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a small cask of oaten bread for nourishment.
Don't look for a lot of genealogical information in the book.There is a mention here and there of a handful of families a fortunate few may be able to connect with; but on the whole this book is a living, breathing picture of life in Donegal when almost every Donegal man still spoke and read Irish as his native tongue and the Irish language had yet to melt away under the onslaught of English like the snow on a river bank, to use McGlinchey's phrase.
There are tales in the book of Donegal farmwives walking the thirty miles from Clonmany parish to the market in Derry and back again in time to do more chores before nightfall; of the oldtimers sitting with their backs to the fire at night sharing the ancient exploits of Finn and Cuchulain; of a rapacious Scottish landlord named McNeill from whom no comely lass in the parish was safe; of an Irish schoolmaster overly fond of the drink and of his eager young Latin hedgerow scholars; of a sodden Irish landowner who drank away his inheritance at the local pub; and of the great yearly fair at Pollan, a festive event attended by the entire community with occasional tragic consequences for the unlucky.
Books were almost unknown to the common man in Donegal.The few books McGlinchey mentions were mainly religious tracts, in Irish and Latin. He mentions offhandedly that a man of his acquaintance owned a book by someone named Aristotle.Tragicallly he also relates that many of the old Irish manuscripts were burned to prevent the spreading of disease in the community.Even if they had had books its doubtful anyone could have spent much time reading them. The cabins were dark at night and if anyone entered the cabin after dark the fire had to be stirred to raise enough light to see who it was.Homemade candles flickered in the windows on religious holidays.
Contrary to common misconception, the Irish did not just subsist on potatoes.The farmers made their own oaten and flour bread, which they ate with butter and washed down with fresh milk.They supplemented their diets with what they called "kitchen", which included everything from fresh fish to watercress from the ocean strands.Each family had a measure of corn for the winter, and most had at least a cow, perhaps apig and a few chickens, although eggs were a cash crop reserved for the market at Derry.Red meat, as we know it today, was a rarity in their diet.Every farm had its rack of potatoes in the fields.The plows were wooden and drawn by horses.McGlinchey mentions a local farmer, one of whose horses took sick one day, and he took its place in the harness pulling the plow alongside the remaining horse for the rest of the day.
The famine did not seem to affect Donegal nearly as badly as it did much of the rest of Ireland.According to McGlinchey, an earlier famine in 1817 was much more devastating.It's not clear whether this condition pertained to Clonmay parish alone, or whether most of Donegal escaped relatively unscathed.But fly off to America nonetheless did the sons and daughters of Donegal and Inishowen, leaving behind forever the two-roomed thatched roofed cabins and the village fairs of their youth.Some of the more primitive living conditions common elsewhere in Ireland did not seem to prevail in Donegal. Sod cabins were almost unknown, except for temporary accommodations in the summer mountain pastures.Nearly every family had a cabin of stone, McGlinchey says, with lime covered walls, although rarely whitewashed, and hard clay or stone flagged floors.Some cabins even had windows.The fireplaces in early years lacked flues and the pall of smoke was ever present.
McGlinchey didn't write this book - he narrated it to a local schoolmaster when over ninety year's old.His often rambling text was edited by Brian Friel, and first published in manuscript form in 1986 in Belfast.The current edition is published by J.S. Sanders and Company, of Nashville, Tennessee.
I was especially struck by the fact that McGlinchey mentioned that the Donegal folk gave their farm animals, mainly cattle, pet names such as Starry and Missy.In our family we have a copy of the will for our immigrant Donegal ancestor, in which all of the family's cattle were so named.The twig, they say, does not fall far from the tree, and if you'd like to really get a feel for the world in which your Irish ancestors lived, then buy a copy of this book.
You won't regret it.

Interesting look at a bygone age
This book was very interesting. It is a closely edited description of an old man's life in a remote rural area of Ireland in the first half of the century. He tells a few stories from his father's and grandfather's days but mostly describes what life was like during his life. The book was first published in the 50's, I think. Without referring directly at all to the major events of the day, we get a look at the changes that were underlying society in his time. From the story about his grandfather being "pressed" to serve in the British Navy during the Napoleonic wars on, I was hooked. The Kirkus reviews are misleading, though. They make it sound like the man was telling fairy tales instead of fairly straightforwardly recounting his life, which involved a fair amount of superstition.

A disappearing world
Charles McGlinchey's book is wonderful. It manages to convey a sense of the cultural wealth which rural Ireland possessed until so recently. He himself fitted very much into the 'Seanachai' tradition, and we should bethankful that some of his knowledge has been preserved. The delightfulthing about the book is the simplicity of the material. ... Read more

Book Description

Of all green Ireland's saints, Ciaran of Saighir was the first. Born early in the sixth century, Ciaran was called to bring the light of God's name to a dark Ireland that had not yet heard it. While few facts are known of Ciaran's life, author Gary Schmidt here tells the tale that lives on, a tale which is "as true as any story ought to be." Illustrated with luminous oil paintings by Todd Doney, Saint Ciaran is a remarkably beautiful story, full of faith and wonder, miracle and mysteries. ... Read more