Random House New Releases - History - Ireland

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes by Martha Long

2014-01-28T00:30:00-05:00

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes A Memoir of Dublin in the 1950s
Written by Martha Long

Trade Paperback, 480 pages | Seven Stories Press | Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; History - Ireland; Social Science - Women's Studies | $16.95 | 978-1-60980-503-6 (1-60980-503-8)

"Not for the faint of heart, Long's story is a gritty, grueling, and heartbreaking testament to one girl's unbreakable spirit."--Publishers Weekly, starred review

When Martha Long's feckless mother hooks up with the Jackser ("that bandy aul bastard"), and starts having more babies, the abuse and poverty in the house grow more acute. Martha is regularly sent out to beg and more often steal, and her wiles (as a child of 7, 8) are often the only thing keeping food on the table. Jackser is a master of paranoid anger and outburst, keeping the children in an unheated tenement, unable to go to school, at the ready for his unpredictable rages. Then Martha is sent by Jackser to a man he knows in exchange for the price of a few cigarettes. She is nine. She is filthy, lice-ridden, outcast. Martha and Ma escape to England, but for an itinerant Irishwoman finding work in late 1950s England is a near impossibility. Martha treasures the time alone with her mother, but amazingly Ma pines for Jackser and they eventually return to Dublin and the other children. And yet there are prized cartoon magazines, the occasional hidden penny to buy the children sweets, the glimpse of loving family life in other houses, and Martha's hope that she will soon be old enough to make her own way.

Virtually uneducated, Martha Long is natural-born storyteller. Written in the vernacular of the day, the reader is tempted to speak like Martha for the rest of a day (and don't let me hear yer woman roarin' bout it neither). One can't help but cheer on this mischievous, quick-witted, and persistent little girl who has captured hearts across Europe.

Irish Volunteer Soldier 1913-23 by Bill Younghusband

2013-03-19T00:30:00-05:00

Irish Volunteer Soldier 1913-23
Written by Gerry White
Illustrated by Bill Younghusband

eBook, 64 pages | Osprey Publishing | History - Military; History - Modern - 20th Century; History - Ireland | $14.95 | 978-1-4728-0181-4 (1-4728-0181-4)

The political situation in Ireland at the beginning of the 20th century was characterised by crisis and change. Armed rebellion against the British Crown, the prosecution of the Anglo-Irish War, the emergence of the Irish Free State, and the eruption of the Civil War over the treaty with Great Britain ensured that the birth of the modern Irish nation was bloody and difficult. This book details the life of an average Volunteer, and includes the experiences of internment, the lack of established medical facilities for wounded, life on the run, discipline, and typical duties.

On an Irish Island by Robert Kanigel

2013-02-26T00:30:00-05:00

On an Irish Island The Lost World of the Great Blasket
Written by Robert Kanigel

Trade Paperback, 336 pages | Vintage | History - Ireland; History - Social History; Language Arts - Linguistics | $16.00 | 978-0-307-38987-9 (0-307-38987-1)

On an Irish Island tells the remarkable story of a remote outpost nearly untouched by time in the first half of the twentieth century, and of the adventurous men and women who visited and were inspired by it.

In a love letter to a vanished way of life, Robert Kanigel brings to life this wildly beautiful island, notable for the vivid communal life of its residents and the unadulterated Irish they spoke well into the twentieth century. With the Irish language rapidly disappearing, Great Blasket became a magnet for scholars, linguists, and writers during the Gaelic renaissance. As we follow these visitors—among them John Millington Synge, author of The Playboy of the Western World—we are captivated both by the tiny group of islanders who kept an entire country’s past alive and by their complex relationships with those who brought the island’s story to the larger world.

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes by Martha Long

2012-11-13T00:30:00-05:00

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes A Memoir of Dublin in the 1950s
Written by Martha Long

Hardcover, 480 pages | Seven Stories Press | Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; History - Ireland; Social Science - Women's Studies | $26.95 | 978-1-60980-414-5 (1-60980-414-7)

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes by Martha Long

2012-11-13T00:30:00-05:00

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes A Memoir of Dublin in the 1950s
Written by Martha Long

eBook, 480 pages | Seven Stories Press | Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; History - Ireland; Social Science - Women's Studies | $26.95 | 978-1-60980-415-2 (1-60980-415-5)

When Martha Long's feckless mother hooks up with the Jackser ("that bandy aul bastard"), and starts having more babies, the abuse and poverty in the house grow more acute. Martha is regularly sent out to beg and more often steal, and her wiles (as a child of 7, 8) are often the only thing keeping food on the table. Jackser is a master of paranoid anger and outburst, keeping the children in an unheated tenement, unable to go to school, at the ready for his unpredictable rages. Then Martha is sent by Jackser to a man he knows in exchange for the price of a few cigarettes. She is nine. She is filthy, lice-ridden, outcast. Martha and Ma escape to England, but for an itinerant Irishwoman finding work in late 1950s England is a near impossibility. Martha treasures the time alone with her mother, but amazingly Ma pines for Jackser and they eventually return to Dublin and the other children. And yet there are prized cartoon magazines, the occasional hidden penny to buy the children sweets, the glimpse of loving family life in other houses, and Martha's hope that she will soon be old enough to make her own way.

Virtually uneducated, Martha Long is natural-born storyteller. Written in the vernacular of the day, the reader is tempted to speak like Martha for the rest of a day (and don't let me hear yer woman roarin' bout it neither). One can't help but cheer on this mischievous, quick-witted, and persistent little girl who has captured hearts across Europe.

Making Peace by George Mitchell

2012-08-08T00:30:00-05:00

Making Peace
Written by George Mitchell

eBook | Knopf | Political Science - Peace; History - Ireland; Political Science | $19.99 | 978-0-307-82448-6 (0-307-82448-9)

Fifteen minutes before five o'clock on Good Friday, 1998, Senator George Mitchell was informed that his long and difficult quest for an Irish peace accord had succeeded--the Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland, and the governments of the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, would sign the agreement. Now Mitchell, who served as independent chairman of the peace talks for the length of the process, tells us the inside story of the grueling road to this momentous accord.

For more than two years, Mitchell, who was Senate majority leader under Presidents Bush and Clinton, labored to bring together parties whose mutual hostility--after decades of violence and mistrust--seemed insurmountable: Sinn Fein, represented by Gerry Adams; the Catholic moderates, led by John Hume; the majority Protestant party, headed by David Trimble; Ian Paisley's hard-line unionists; and, not least, the governments of the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, headed by Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair.

The world watched as the tense and dramatic process unfolded, sometimes teetering on the brink of failure. Here, for the first time, we are given a behind-the-scenes view of the principal players--the personalities who shaped the process--and of the contentious, at times vitriolic, proceedings. We learn how, as the deadline approached, extremist violence and factional intransigence almost drove the talks to collapse. And we witness the intensity of the final negotiating session, the interventions of Ahern and Blair, the late-night phone calls from President Clinton, a last-ditch attempt at disruption by Paisley, and ultimately an agreement that, despite subsequent inflammatory acts aimed at destroying it, has set Northern Ireland's future on track toward a more lasting peace.

The Irish Defence Forces since 1922 by Bill Younghusband

2012-02-21T00:30:00-05:00

The Irish Defence Forces since 1922
Written by Donal MacCarron
Illustrated by Bill Younghusband

eBook, 48 pages | Osprey Publishing | History - Military; History - Ireland; History - Reference | $13.95 | 978-1-78096-391-4 (1-78096-391-2)

Born in the Civil War of 1922–23, the army of the Republic of Ireland occupied a sensitive place in the national culture for many years. In World War II (1939-1945), it faced the challenge of maintaining Ireland’s integrity as neutral. Post-war, it found a new role in 1960, providing troops for the United Nations intervention in the war-torn Congo; and since then has supported UN missions in the Middle East and elsewhere. More recently the border with troubled Ulster has obliged the Republic to invest in reform and modernisation. Ireland’s freedom to seek examples and equipment worldwide has created an interesting progression of uniforms, illustrated in this study of Ireland’s forces over 80 years.

On an Irish Island by Robert Kanigel

2012-02-07T00:30:00-05:00

On an Irish Island
Written by Robert Kanigel

Hardcover, 336 pages | Knopf | History - Ireland; History - Social History; Language Arts - Linguistics | $26.95 | 978-0-307-26959-1 (0-307-26959-0)

On an Irish Island is a love letter to a vanished way of life, in which Robert Kanigel, the highly praised author of The Man Who Knew Infinity and The One Best Way, tells the story of the Great Blasket, a wildly beautiful island off the west coast of Ireland, renowned during the early twentieth century for the rich communal life of its residents and the unadulterated Irish they spoke. With the Irish language vanishing all through the rest of Ireland, the Great Blasket became a magnet for scholars and writers drawn there during the Gaelic renaissance—and the scene for a memorable clash of cultures between modern life and an older, sometimes sweeter world slipping away.

Kanigel introduces us to the playwright John Millington Synge, some of whose characters in The Playboy of the Western World, were inspired by his time on the island; Carl Marstrander, a Norwegian linguist who gave his place on Norway’s Olympic team for a summer on the Blasket; Marie-Louise Sjoestedt, a Celtic studies scholar fresh from the Sorbonne; and central to the story, George Thomson, a British classicist whose involvement with the island and its people we follow from his first visit as a twenty-year-old to the end of his life.

On the island, they met a colorful coterie of men and women with whom they formed lifelong and life-changing friendships. There’s Tomás O’Crohan, a stoic fisherman, one of the few islanders who could read and write Irish, who tutored many of the incomers in the language’s formidable intricacies and became the Blasket’s first published writer; Maurice O’Sullivan, a good-natured prankster and teller of stories, whose memoir, Twenty Years A-Growing, became an Irish classic; and Peig Sayers, whose endless repertoire of earthy tales left listeners spellbound.

As we get to know these men and women, we become immersed in the vivid culture of the islanders, their hard lives of fishing and farming matched by their love of singing, dancing, and talk. Yet, sadly, we watch them leave the island, the village becoming uninhabited by 1953. The story of the Great Blasket is one of struggle—between the call of modernity and the tug of Ireland’s ancient ways, between the promise of emigration and the peculiar warmth of island life amid its physical isolation. But ultimately it is a tribute to the strength and beauty of a people who, tucked away from the rest of civilization, kept alive a nation’s past, and to the newcomers and islanders alike who brought the island’s remarkable story to the larger world.

On an Irish Island by Robert Kanigel

2012-02-07T00:30:00-05:00

On an Irish Island
Written by Robert Kanigel

eBook, 336 pages | Vintage | History - Ireland; History - Social History; Language Arts - Linguistics | $11.99 | 978-0-307-95748-1 (0-307-95748-9)

Armies of the Irish Rebellion 1798 by Samuel Embleton

2011-09-20T00:30:00-05:00

Armies of the Irish Rebellion 1798
Written by Stuart Reid
Illustrated by Gerry Embleton and Samuel Embleton

Trade Paperback, 48 pages | Osprey Publishing | History - Ireland; History - Military; History - Modern - 18th Century | $17.95 | 978-1-84908-507-6 (1-84908-507-2)

A stunning exploration of a legendary moment in Irish history. In 1798 with the British Army preoccupied in fighting France in the Caribbean and Mediterranean as well as guarding Southeast England from threatened invasion, a co-ordinated uprising broke out across the water in Ireland. Uniquely this was neither a Catholic nor a Protestant rebellion, but rather a joint effort by leaders and insurgents from both sides of the community. The Irish Rebellion (1798) was directed against the corrupt government based at Dublin Castle and was inspired in part by the people's revolutions in America and France. This title illuminates the lives of the Irish peasants, armed mostly with pikes, who confronted the small number of British troops based in their country.

Armies of the Irish Rebellion 1798 by Gerry Embleton

2011-09-20T00:30:00-05:00

Armies of the Irish Rebellion 1798
Written by Stuart Reid
Illustrated by Gerry Embleton

eBook, 48 pages | Osprey Publishing | History - Ireland; History - Military; History - Modern - 18th Century | $13.95 | 978-1-84908-939-5 (1-84908-939-6)

The Northern Ireland Troubles by Aaron Edwards

2011-08-23T00:30:00-05:00

The Northern Ireland Troubles Operation Banner 1969-2007
Written by Aaron Edwards

Trade Paperback, 96 pages | Osprey Publishing | History - Ireland; History - Military; History - Modern - 20th Century | $19.95 | 978-1-84908-525-0 (1-84908-525-0)

No other modern British military campaign evokes as much emotion as the difficult and exceptionally lengthy operational deployment to Northern Ireland. Aaron Edward's new volume on the so-called 'Troubles' considers the strategic, operational and tactical level aspects of the British Army's longest ever campaign: the 38-year Military Aid to the Civil Power deployment in Northern Ireland, which was provided to support the local authorities restore law and order in the midst of sustained republican and loyalist violence. Codenamed 'Operation Banner' the Army's role went through a number of phases, moving from a peacekeeping stance in 1969-71, to a counter-insurgency position in 1971-77, finally ending in 2007, thirty years after the decision to scale back its activities in favour of giving the Royal Ulster Constabulary (and from 2000 the Police Service of Northern Ireland) primacy in counter-terrorist operations. An essential volume for anyone looking for insight into this historic conflict.

The Northern Ireland Troubles by Aaron Edwards

2011-08-23T00:30:00-05:00

The Northern Ireland Troubles Operation Banner 1969-2007
Written by Aaron Edwards

eBook, 96 pages | Osprey Publishing | History - Ireland; History - Military; History - Modern - 20th Century | $15.95 | 978-1-84908-871-8 (1-84908-871-3)

The Great Shame by Thomas Keneally

2010-09-22T00:30:00-05:00

The Great Shame And the Triumph of the Irish in the English-Speaking World
Written by Thomas Keneally

eBook, 768 pages | Anchor | History - Ireland | $15.99 | 978-0-307-76439-3 (0-307-76439-7)

"Thomas Keneally recounts history with the uncanny skill of a great novelist whose only interest is to lay bare the human heart in all its hope and pain. As he was able to do in Schindler's List, he shows us in The Great Shame a people despised and rejected to the point of death, who in the face of all their sorrows manage to keep their souls. This story of oppression, famine, and emigration--a principal chapter in the story of man's inhumanity to man--becomes in Keneally's hands an act of resurrection; Irishmen and Irishwomen of a century and a half ago live once more within the pages of this book."
--Thomas Cahill, author of How the Irish Saved Civilization

In the nineteenth century, Ireland lost half of its population to famine, emigration to the United States and Canada, and the forced transportation of convicts to Australia. The forebears of Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's List, were victims of that tragedy, and in The Great Shame Keneally has written an astonishing, monumental work that tells the full story of the Irish diaspora with the narrative grip and flair of a great novel. Based on unique research among little-known sources, this masterly book surveys eighty years of Irish history through the eyes of political prisoners--including Keneally's ancestors--who left Ireland in chains and eventually found glory, in one form or another, in Australia and America.

We meet William Smith O'Brien, leader of an uprising at the height of the Irish Famine, who rose from solitary confinement in Australia to become the Mandela of his age; Thomas Francis Meagher, whose escape from Australian captivity led to a glittering American career as an orator, a Union general, and governor of Montana; John Mitchel, who became a Confederate newspaper reporter, gave two of his sons to the Southern cause, was imprisoned with Jefferson Davis--and returned to Ireland to become mayor of Tipperary; and John Boyle O'Reilly, who fled a life sentence in Australia to become one of nineteenth-century America's leading literary lights.

Through the lives of many such men and women--famous and obscure, some heroes and some fools (most a little of both), all of them stubborn, acutely sensitive, and devastatingly charming--we become immersed in the Irish experience and its astonishing history. From Ireland to Canada and the United States to the bush towns of Australia, we are plunged into stories of tragedy, survival, and triumph. All are vividly portrayed in Keneally's spellbinding prose, as he reveals the enormous influence the exiled Irish have had on the English-speaking world.

"A terrible and personal saga, history delivered with a scholar's density of detail but with the individualizing power of a multi-talented novelist."
--William Kennedy

Wars of the Irish Kings by David W. McCullough

2010-05-12T00:30:00-05:00

Wars of the Irish Kings A Thousand Years of Struggle, from the Age of Myth through the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I
Written by David W. McCullough

eBook, 384 pages | Broadway | History - Ireland; History - Military | $19.99 | 978-0-307-43473-9 (0-307-43473-7)

For the first thousand years of its history, Ireland was shaped by its monasteries and its wars. The artistic flourishing of the monasteries has received a good deal of attention, but the violent and varied wars have in recent years gone unremembered. In Wars of the Irish Kings, David Willis McCullough has turned back to the earliest accounts of these struggles to present a rich tapestry of Ireland's fight for its identity.

Beginning with the legends of ancient wars and warriors, moving through a time when history and storytelling were not separate crafts, into a time when history was as much propaganda as fact, Wars of the Irish Kings tells of tribal battles, foreign invasions, Viking raids, family feuds, wars between rival Irish kingdoms, and wars of rebellion against the English.

This collection is peopled with familiar names: Cuchulain, Finn MacCool, Brian Boru, Mad King Sweeney, Strongbow, Edward and Robert Bruce, Queen Elizabeth I and Lord Essex, Hugh O'Donnell, and Hugh O'Neill.

Battles formed the legends and history of the land: the Da Dannan meet the Fir Bolgs near Sligo, Brian Boru faces the Vikings at Clontarf in Dublin Bay, High King Rory O'Connor confronts the English invaders near Waterford, O'Briens battle the English (and other O'Briens) at Dysert O'Dea near Limerick, guns are carried for the first time in battle at Knockdoe near Galway, the Bruces from Scotland and their Irish allies overwhelm the English at Connor in Ulster, and Hugh O'Neill ambushes General Bagenal near Armagh. The book ends near Cork in 1601 when the English defeat O'Neill and his Spanish allies at Kinsale.

Common people as well as kings appear in these pages. A foot soldier in the early days of gunpowder accidentally sets off a disastrous explosion, a harper's disembodied head is sent by error to the king of England, who displays it as that of the king of Ireland, and a Welsh camp follower named Alice is given the job of executing Irish captives during the English invasion.

The sources for these stories and many more range from ancient manuscripts telling of mythical battles to a seventeenth-century siege diary. There are excerpts from such Irish literary masterpieces as The Cattle Raid of Cooley (The Tain), the monumental Annals of the Four Masters, passages from Gerald of Wales's account of the English conquest in the twelfth century, pages from an Icelandic saga, and even a blistering letter from Queen Elizabeth I to her inept commander in Ireland ("You do but piece up a hollow peace . . . ").

The result is a surprisingly immediate and stunning portrait of an all-but-forgotten time that forged the Ireland to come.

From the Hardcover edition.

How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill

2010-04-28T00:30:00-05:00

How the Irish Saved Civilization
Written by Thomas Cahill

eBook, 256 pages | Anchor | History - Ireland | $11.99 | 978-0-307-75513-1 (0-307-75513-4)

The perfect St. Patrick's Day gift, and a book in the best tradition of popular history -- the untold story of Ireland's role in maintaining Western culture while the Dark Ages settled on Europe.

Every year millions of Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but they may not be aware of how great an influence St. Patrick was on the subsequent history of civilization. Not only did he bring Christianity to Ireland, he instilled a sense of literacy and learning that would create the conditions that allowed Ireland to become "the isle of saints and scholars" -- and thus preserve Western culture while Europe was being overrun by barbarians.

In this entertaining and compelling narrative, Thomas Cahill tells the story of how Europe evolved from the classical age of Rome to the medieval era. Without Ireland, the transition could not have taken place. Not only did Irish monks and scribes maintain the very record of Western civilization -- copying manuscripts of Greek and Latin writers, both pagan and Christian, while libraries and learning on the continent were forever lost -- they brought their uniquely Irish world-view to the task.

As Cahill delightfully illustrates, so much of the liveliness we associate with medieval culture has its roots in Ireland. When the seeds of culture were replanted on the European continent, it was from Ireland that they were germinated.

In the tradition of Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, How The Irish Saved Civilization reconstructs an era that few know about but which is central to understanding our past and our cultural heritage. But it conveys its knowledge with a winking wit that aptly captures the sensibility of the unsung Irish who relaunched civilization.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Stones of Aran: Labyrinth by John Elder

2009-09-08T00:30:00-05:00

Stones of Aran: Labyrinth
Written by Tim Robinson
Introduction by John Elder

Trade Paperback, 528 pages | NYRB Classics | History - Ireland; Travel - Europe - Ireland | $22.95 | 978-1-59017-314-5 (1-59017-314-7)

Tim Robinson’s Stones of Aran is one of the most striking and original literary undertakings of our time. Robinson’s ambition is to find out both what it is to know a landscape, know it as extensively and intimately as possible, and what it takes to make that knowledge, the sense of the landscape itself, come alive in writing. It is a project that draws on the legacies of Thoreau and Joyce, to which Robinson brings his own polymathic gifts as cartographer, mathematician, historian, and, above all, shaper of words.

In Pilgrimage Robinson walked the entire coast of Airann, largest of the Aran islands. In Labyrinth he turns in to the island’s interior. These two books—parts of an inseparable whole that can, for all that, be read quite separately from each other—constitute a vast polyphonic composition, at once encyclopedic and lyrical, scientific and surprisingly personal. Exploring the illimitable complexity and bounty contained in the seemingly limited confines of a single island, Robinson invites us to look without and within and to see the wonder of the world.

Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage by Robert Macfarlane

2008-08-05T00:30:00-05:00

Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage
Written by Tim Robinson
Introduction by Robert Macfarlane

Trade Paperback, 316 pages | NYRB Classics | Travel - Europe - Ireland; History - Ireland; Nature | $18.95 | 978-1-59017-277-3 (1-59017-277-9)

The Aran Islands, in Galway Bay off the west coast of Ireland, are a unique geological and cultural landscape, and for centuries their stark beauty and their inhabitants’ traditional way of life have attracted pilgrims from abroad. The Aran Islands, in Galway Bay off the west coast of Ireland, are a unique geological and cultural landscape, and for centuries their stark beauty and their inhabitants’ traditional way of life have attracted pilgrims from abroad. After a visit with his wife in 1972, Tim Robinson moved to the islands, where he started making maps and gathering stories, eventually developing the idea for a cosmic history of Árainn, the largest of the three islands. Pilgrimage is the first of two volumes that make up Stones of Aran, in which Robinson maps the length and breadth of Árainn. Here he circles the entire island, following a clockwise, sunwise path in quest of the “good step,” in which walking itself becomes a form of attention and contemplation.

Like Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia, Stones of Aran is not only a meticulous and mesmerizing study of place but an entrancing and altogether unclassiﬁable work of literature. Robinson explores Aran in both its elemental and mythical dimensions, taking us deep into the island’s folklore, wildlife, names, habitations, and natural and human histories. Bringing to life the ongoing, forever unpredictable encounter between one man and a given landscape, Stones of Aran discovers worlds.

Robinson’s voyage continues in Stones of Aran: Labyrinth

Daughters of Ireland by Janet Todd

2007-12-18T00:30:00-05:00

Daughters of Ireland The Rebellious Kingsborough Sisters and the Making of a Modern Nation
Written by Janet Todd

eBook, 368 pages | Ballantine Books | History - Ireland; History - Modern - 16Th Century; History | $11.99 | 978-0-307-41493-9 (0-307-41493-0)

They were known as the Ascendancy, the dashing aristocratic elite that controlled Irish politics and society at the end of the eighteenth century—and at their pinnacle stood Caroline and Robert King, Lord and Lady Kingsborough of Mitchelstown Castle. Heirs to ancient estates and a vast fortune, Lord and Lady Kingsborough appeared to be blessed with everything but marital love—which only made the scandal that tore through their family more shocking. In 1798, at the height of a rebellion that was setting Ireland ablaze, Robert King was tried for the murder of his wife’s cousin—a crime born of passion that proved to have extraordinary political implications. In her brilliant new book, Janet Todd unfolds the fascinating story of how this powerful Anglo-Irish family became entwined with the downfall not only of their class, but of their very way of life.

Like Amanda Foreman’s bestselling Georgiana, Daughters of Ireland brings to life the world of a glittering elite in an age of international revolution. When her daughters, Margaret and Mary, were at their most impressionable, Lady Kingsborough hired the firebrand feminist Mary Wollstonecraft to be their governess, little realizing how radically this would alter both girls’ beliefs and characters. The tall, striking Margaret went on to provide crucial support to the United Irishmen in the days leading up to the Rebellion of 1798, while soft, pleasing Mary indulged in an illicit, and all but incestuous love affair that precipitated multiple tragedies.

As the Kingsboroughs imploded, the most powerful and colorful figures of the day were swept up in their drama—the dashing aristocrat turned revolutionary Lord Edward Fitzgerald; the liberal, cultivated Countess of Moira, a terrible snob despite her support of Irish revolutionaires; the notorious philanderer Colonel George King, whose sexual debauchery was matched only by his appalling cruelty; Britain’s cold calculating prime minister William Pitt and its mad ruler King George III.

With irresistible narrative drive and richly intimate historic detail, Daughters of Ireland an absolutely spellbinding work of history, biography, passion, and rebellion.

From the Hardcover edition.

The Princes of Ireland by John Keating

2006-01-10T00:30:00-05:00

The Princes of Ireland The Dublin Saga
Written by Edward Rutherfurd
Read by John Keating

Abridged Audiobook Download | Random House Audio | History - Ireland | $19.99 | 978-0-7393-3992-3 (0-7393-3992-3)

From the internationally bestselling author of London and Sarum -- a magnificent epic about love and war, family life and political intrigue in Ireland over the course of seventeen centuries. Like the novels of James Michener, The Princes of Ireland brilliantly interweaves engrossing fiction and well-researched fact to capture the essence of a place.

Edward Rutherfurd has introduced millions of readers to the human dramas that are the lifeblood of history. From his first bestseller, Sarum, to the #1 bestseller London, he has captivated audiences with gripping narratives that follow the fortunes of several fictional families down through the ages. The Princes of Ireland, a sweeping panorama steeped in the tragedy and glory that is Ireland, epitomizes the power and richness of Rutherfurd’s storytelling magic.

The saga begins in pre-Christian Ireland with a clever refashioning of the legend of Cuchulainn, and culminates in the dramatic founding of the Free Irish State in 1922. Through the interlocking stories of a wonderfully imagined cast of characters -- monks and noblemen, soldiers and rebels, craftswomen and writers -- Rutherfurd vividly conveys the personal passions and shared dreams that shaped the character of the country. He takes readers inside all the major events in Irish history: the reign of the fierce and mighty kings of Tara; the mission of Saint Patrick; the Viking invasion and the founding of Dublin; the trickery of Henry II, which gave England its foothold on the island in 1167; the plantations of the Tudors and the savagery of Cromwell; the flight of the “Wild Geese”; the failed rebellion of 1798; the Great Famine and the Easter Rebellion. With Rutherfurd’s well-crafted storytelling, readers witness the rise of the Fenians in the late nineteenth century, the splendours of the Irish cultural renaissance, and the bloody battles for Irish independence, as though experiencing their momentous impact firsthand.

Tens of millions of North Americans claim Irish descent. Generations of people have been enchanted by Irish literature, and visitors flock to Dublin and its environs year after year. The Princes of Ireland will appeal to all of them -- and to anyone who relishes epic entertainment spun by a master.

From the Hardcover edition.

Random House New Releases - History - Ireland

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes by Martha Long

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes A Memoir of Dublin in the 1950sWritten by Martha Long

Irish Volunteer Soldier 1913-23 by Bill Younghusband

Irish Volunteer Soldier 1913-23 Written by Gerry White Illustrated by Bill Younghusband

On an Irish Island by Robert Kanigel

On an Irish Island The Lost World of the Great BlasketWritten by Robert Kanigel

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes by Martha Long

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes A Memoir of Dublin in the 1950sWritten by Martha Long

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes by Martha Long

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes A Memoir of Dublin in the 1950sWritten by Martha Long

Making Peace by George Mitchell

Making Peace Written by George Mitchell

The Irish Defence Forces since 1922 by Bill Younghusband

The Irish Defence Forces since 1922 Written by Donal MacCarron Illustrated by Bill Younghusband

On an Irish Island by Robert Kanigel

On an Irish Island Written by Robert Kanigel

On an Irish Island by Robert Kanigel

On an Irish Island Written by Robert Kanigel

Armies of the Irish Rebellion 1798 by Samuel Embleton

Armies of the Irish Rebellion 1798 Written by Stuart Reid Illustrated by Gerry Embleton and Samuel Embleton

Armies of the Irish Rebellion 1798 by Gerry Embleton

Armies of the Irish Rebellion 1798 Written by Stuart Reid Illustrated by Gerry Embleton

The Northern Ireland Troubles by Aaron Edwards

The Northern Ireland Troubles Operation Banner 1969-2007Written by Aaron Edwards

The Northern Ireland Troubles by Aaron Edwards

The Northern Ireland Troubles Operation Banner 1969-2007Written by Aaron Edwards

The Great Shame by Thomas Keneally

The Great Shame And the Triumph of the Irish in the English-Speaking WorldWritten by Thomas Keneally

Wars of the Irish Kings by David W. McCullough

Wars of the Irish Kings A Thousand Years of Struggle, from the Age of Myth through the Reign of Queen Elizabeth IWritten by David W. McCullough

How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill

How the Irish Saved Civilization Written by Thomas Cahill

Stones of Aran: Labyrinth by John Elder

Stones of Aran: Labyrinth Written by Tim Robinson Introduction by John Elder

Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage by Robert Macfarlane

Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage Written by Tim Robinson Introduction by Robert Macfarlane

Daughters of Ireland by Janet Todd

Daughters of Ireland The Rebellious Kingsborough Sisters and the Making of a Modern NationWritten by Janet Todd

The Princes of Ireland by John Keating

The Princes of Ireland The Dublin SagaWritten by Edward Rutherfurd Read by John Keating

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes A Memoir of Dublin in the 1950s
Written by Martha Long

Irish Volunteer Soldier 1913-23
Written by Gerry White
Illustrated by Bill Younghusband

On an Irish Island The Lost World of the Great Blasket
Written by Robert Kanigel

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes A Memoir of Dublin in the 1950s
Written by Martha Long

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes A Memoir of Dublin in the 1950s
Written by Martha Long

Making Peace
Written by George Mitchell

The Irish Defence Forces since 1922
Written by Donal MacCarron
Illustrated by Bill Younghusband

On an Irish Island
Written by Robert Kanigel

On an Irish Island
Written by Robert Kanigel

Armies of the Irish Rebellion 1798
Written by Stuart Reid
Illustrated by Gerry Embleton and Samuel Embleton

Armies of the Irish Rebellion 1798
Written by Stuart Reid
Illustrated by Gerry Embleton

The Northern Ireland Troubles Operation Banner 1969-2007
Written by Aaron Edwards

The Northern Ireland Troubles Operation Banner 1969-2007
Written by Aaron Edwards

The Great Shame And the Triumph of the Irish in the English-Speaking World
Written by Thomas Keneally

Wars of the Irish Kings A Thousand Years of Struggle, from the Age of Myth through the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I
Written by David W. McCullough

How the Irish Saved Civilization
Written by Thomas Cahill

Stones of Aran: Labyrinth
Written by Tim Robinson
Introduction by John Elder

Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage
Written by Tim Robinson
Introduction by Robert Macfarlane

Daughters of Ireland The Rebellious Kingsborough Sisters and the Making of a Modern Nation
Written by Janet Todd

The Princes of Ireland The Dublin Saga
Written by Edward Rutherfurd
Read by John Keating