Ute Lotz-Heumann (Mohr Siebeck, DM198) ISBN 3161474295 In 1605 Landgrave Maurice of Hesse-Kassel converted to Calvinism. This act, initially based on the landgrave’s private faith, had far-reaching consequences for his territory, which thirteen years later became entangled in the Thirty Years War, and for his traditionally Lutheran subjects. In a series of ordinances Maurice tried … Read more
Linda Connolly (Palgrave, E80.60) ISBN 33377132X This is a book by a sociologist which has a lot to offer historians. Its central focus is on the women’s movement in the Irish Republic from 1970 to the 1990s. The context for this is set by a brief survey of developments over the preceding hundred and more … Read more
Finbar Cullen (ed.) (The Ireland Institute, E7.50) ISSSN 13939696 These two volumes make a sharp contrast. The first volume is a reasonably lively set of essays, most of them making a fairly conventional contemporary Irish radical republican argument. Some of these essays are lively and generous in tone but there are plenty of moments of … Read more
R.F. Foster (Allen Lane, £20) ISBN 0713994975Roy Foster has already made an enormous contribution to the writing of Irish history. He has inspired, encouraged, and provoked many of us to engage in/with the reassessment of Irish historical writing and thinking that has marked the last two decades as among the most fruitful in Irish historical … Read more
Christine Kinealy (Palgrave, £15.50 pb, £47.50 hb) ISBN 0333677722 The Great Irish Potato Famine James S. Donnelly, Jr (Sutton Publishing, £20) ISBN 0750926325 These are two books which, at first sight, bear certain similarities. Both are surveys of the Great Famine by established scholars in the field, which combine elements of the author’s previous work … Read more