Nick Maxwell

Becoming American under fire: Irish Americans, African Americans, and the politics of citizenship during the Civil War era

Becoming American under fire: Irish Americans, African Americans, and the politics of citizenship during the Civil War era Christian G. Samito (Cornell University Press, $39.95) ISBN 9780801448461   Just as on this side of the pond, in the United States the discourse of citizenship circulates in increasingly impoverished forms. The recent repackaging of republicanism via … Read more

John Borgonovo’s review of Gerard Murphy’s The year of disappearances

Sir,—I was somewhat disappointed with John Borgonovo’s review of my book The year of disappearances (HI 19.1, Jan./Feb. 2011). I would have expected more in the line of constructive criticism rather than the dismissal that the book received. My book, he asserts, ‘cannot be presented as serious scholarship; it is a work in which speculation … Read more

Travellers’ accounts as source-materials for Irish historians

Travellers’ accounts as source-materials for Irish historians Maynooth Research Guides for Irish Local History C. J. Woods (Four Courts Press, €24.95) ISBN 9781846821325   Here’s Ireland! Be it rambles in Teague Land or Shamrock Land, Lights and shades of Famine-stricken Ireland, Paddy’s dreams or John Bull’s nightmare, on a summer’s jaunt or through winter wet, … Read more

Martial power and Elizabethan political culture: military men in England and Ireland, 1558–1594

Martial power and Elizabethan political culture: military men in England and Ireland, 1558–1594 Rory Rapple (Cambridge University Press, £60) ISBN 9780521843539   An enduring symbol of Queen Elizabeth’s ‘Merry England’ is Falstaff, Shakespeare’s comic creation. The playwright almost certainly conjured him from the many unemployed army captains loitering about London. When not jossing with the … Read more

Eighteenth-century Ireland: the isle of slaves

Eighteenth-century Ireland: the isle of slaves Ian McBride New Gill History of Ireland 4 (Gill and Macmillan, Ä24) ISBN 9780717116270    There are many paths through the historical forest. Ian McBride’s is different from his predecessors’, and in particular from Edith Johnston’s in the original Gill series published in 1974. His synthesis of advances in … Read more