ANDREW SANDERS Edinburgh University Press €14.25 ISBN 9780748641123 Despite a title with a very contemporary resonance, Andrew Sanders’s book is actually a history of Irish republicanism from the 1960s to the present, with an introductory chapter beginning in 1916. Thus the title of the book seems somewhat controversial in appearing to deny legitimacy to all … Read more
DONAL FALLON New Island €14.99 ISBN 9781848403260 When the Berlin Wall was attacked and conquered by an agitated mob in 1989, it was followed quickly by the tearing down of statues of the old regimes in Eastern Europe. More recently, in 2003 the world witnessed the attack on the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad; … Read more
ROBERT McLAUGHLIN University of Toronto Press CAN$29.95 ISBN 9781442610972 Any book on the Irish that begins with the 1998 peace talks in the North and ends with a reminder about Orange gunrunning during the Troubles is bound to fall into cliché. Robert McLaughlin’s Irish Canadian conflict and the struggle for Irish independence, 1912–1925 is no … Read more
MICHAEL LAFFAN Royal Irish Academy €30 ISBN 9781908996398 A Dublin Opinion cartoon introduces a just-retired William T. Cosgrave to ‘History’ in 1944. Yet it has taken 70 years for the image of the head of the first government of Ireland to re-emerge into the public consciousness. This, the first complete biography by an academic, provides … Read more
ANDREW CARPENTER (general ed.) Yale University Press for the Royal Irish Academy Full set €475, single volumes €95 each ISBNs: 9780300179194 (Medieval) 9780300179200 (Painting) 9780300179217 (Sculpture) 9780300179224 (Architecture) 9780300179231 (Twentieth Century) Reviewed by Peter Harbison The biggest book event of 2014 must surely have been the publication in November of the superb five-volume Art and … Read more