New Books in Irish Studies
197 episodes - English - Latest episode: 5 days ago - ★★★★★ - 6 ratingsInterviews with Scholars of Ireland about their New Books
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Episodes
Laura Robson and Arie Dubnov, "Partitions: A Transnational History of Twentieth-Century Territorial Separatism" (Stanford UP, 2019)
July 08, 2019 08:00 - 49 minutesThe practice of Partition understood as the physical division of territory along ethno-religious lines into separate nation-states is often regarded as a successful political "solution" to ethnic conflict. In their edited volume Partitions: A Transnational History of Twentieth-Century Territorial Separatism (Stanford University Press, 2019), Laura Robson and Arie Dubnov uncover the collective history of the concept of partition and locate its genealogy in the politics of twentieth-century emp...
Kirsteen M. MacKenzie, "The Solemn League and Covenant of the Three Kingdoms and the Cromwellian Union 1643-1663" (Routledge, 2018)
June 12, 2019 08:00 - 35 minutesKirsteen M. MacKenzie, an historian who has taught for many years at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, has published a definitive account of the relationships between England, Scotland and Ireland during the Cromwellian republic of the 1650s. The Solemn League and Covenant of the Three Kingdoms and the Cromwellian Union 1643-1663(Routledge, 2018) re-examines the political and constitutional bonds that were implied by the covenant to which the English and Scottish parliaments had subscribe...
Guy Beiner, "Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster" (Oxford UP, 2018)
May 21, 2019 08:00 - 36 minutesGuy Beiner, who is professor of modern history at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, has written one of the longest and certainly one of the most extraordinary recent contributions to the historiography of Ireland and of memory studies. His new book, Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster(Oxford University Press, 2018), argues for the complexities and ambiguities of communal recollection by focusing on the contested memories of one of ...
Isobel O’Hare, "all this can be yours" (University of Hell Press, 2019)
March 15, 2019 10:00 - 57 minutesIsobel O’Hare’s all this can be yours (University of Hell Press, 2019) presents a series of erasures crafted from celebrity sexual assault apologies. These poems offer fierce explorations of the truth hidden behind apologies intended to explain away or dilute culpability, rather than accept responsibility. The result is a powerful collection that opens up a wider conversation surrounding sexual assault and the need for change on a systemic level. Isobel O’Hare is a poet and essayist who has d...
Geraldine Heng, "The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
February 26, 2019 11:00 - 1 hourIn The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press 2018), Geraldine Heng collects a remarkable array of medieval approaches to race that show the breadth and depth of the kinds of racial thinking in medieval society. In creating a detailed impression of the medieval race-making that would be reconfigured into the biological racism of the modern era, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages reaches beyond medievalists and race-studies scholars to anyone i...
Andrew R. Holmes, "The Irish Presbyterian Mind: Conservative Theology, Evangelical Experience, and Modern Criticism, 1830-1930" (Oxford UP, 2018)
February 04, 2019 11:00 - 37 minutesEarlier today I caught up with my colleague at Queen’s University Belfast, Andrew R. Holmes, to discuss his outstanding new book, The Irish Presbyterian Mind: Conservative Theology, Evangelical Experience, and Modern Criticism, 1830-1930 (Oxford UP, 2018). Andrew has been working on the history of Irish Presbyterianism for the last fifteen years or so, and along the way has produced some of the most exciting work on the history of evangelicalism in Britain and Ireland. His distinctive vantage...
Hidetaka Hirota, "Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy" (Oxford UP, 2018)
January 23, 2019 11:00 - 34 minutesHidetaka Hirota is an Assistant Professor in the Institute for Advanced Study at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. Prior to his current position, he was a Mellon Research Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University and taught at the City University of New York-City College. Dr. Hirota’s book, Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy (Oxford University Press, 2018) has received awards from the ...
Rory Cormac, "Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy" (Oxford UP, 2018)
December 27, 2018 11:00 - 46 minutesIn the decades following the Second World War, the British government increasingly turned to covert operations as a means of achieving their foreign policy goals. In Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 2018), Rory Cormac describes the establishment of covert action as a tool of foreign policy and the various ways in which it was applied. As he explains, covert action was initially seen as a tool of warfare the use...
Suman Seth, "Difference and Disease: Medicine, Race, and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
December 19, 2018 11:00 - 43 minutesSuman Seth's new book Difference and Disease: Medicine, Race, and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2018)provides a new angle on the formation of modern ideas of race through the formation of the British Empire. While scholars have often addressed this phenomenon through the lenses of academic anatomy and natural history, Seth suggests that medical care and theories of pathology were central to how Britons began to see their bodies as fundamentally distinct fr...
Diarmaid MacCulloch, "Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life" (Viking, 2018)
November 29, 2018 13:01 - 48 minutesDespite ranking among the most influential people in English history, Thomas Cromwell has long eluded biographers and historians. In Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life (Viking, 2018), though, Diarmaid MacCulloch provides readers with the definitive study of this key figure in the English Reformation. Drawing upon the full range of the available archival material and his own deep understanding of the era, MacCulloch shows how Cromwell’s views and achievements often belie the historical repu...
Donald H. Akenson, “Exporting the Rapture: John Nelson Darby and the Victorian Conquest of North American Evangelicalism” (Oxford UP/McGill-Queen’s UP, 2018)
November 01, 2018 10:00 - 35 minutesDon Akenson, who is Douglas Professor of Canadian and Colonial History at Queen’s University, Ontario, is one of the most eminent scholars of Irish history. Exporting the Rapture: John Nelson Darby and the Victorian Conquest of North American Evangelicalism (Oxford University Press, 2018; McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018) is the second of a projected three-book series of monographs that will explain how a new set of ideas about the church and the end of the world were developed among the...
John Mackay, “The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle Over the Greatest Riches in the American West” (Scribner, 2018)
July 20, 2018 10:00 - 1 hourJohn Mackay’s life began humbly, immigrating as a child from an impoverished Irish household to New York City where he worked selling newspapers in the streets. Within four decades, he was a stakeholder in one of the wealthiest precious metal strikes in the history of the American West, and by the end of his life was one of the wealthiest men in the United States. Gregory Crouch tells Mackay’s fascinating story in The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle Over the Greatest Riches in the Am...
Steve R. Dunn, “Bayly’s War: The Battle for the Western Approaches in the First World War” (Naval Institute Press, 2018)
July 09, 2018 10:00 - 39 minutesThough Great Britain’s warships ruled the waves throughout the First World War, their greatest challenge came from just underneath them. Nowhere was this better demonstrated in the Western Approaches, where, as Steve R. Dunn details in his book Bayly’s War: The Battle for the Western Approaches in the First World War (Naval Institute Press, 2018), the Royal Navy found themselves hard pressed even to secure the trade routes just off their western shores from the threat posed by Germany U-boats...
Ray Cashman, “Packy Jim: Folklore and Worldview on the Irish Border” (U Wisconsin Press, 2016)
January 17, 2018 11:00 - 1 hourHow do individuals on national or societal peripheries make use of tradition and to what ends? How can narratives discursively construct a complex worldview? These are some of the questions Ray Cashman seeks to answer in his new book Packy Jim: Folklore and Worldview on the Irish Border (University of Wisconsin Press, 2016). Focusing on the singular character of Packy Jim McGrath and the narratives that feature in his repertoire—from personal experience narratives to stories about the superna...
Crawford Gribben, “John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat” (Oxford UP, 2017)
January 05, 2018 11:00 - 50 minutesThough the preeminent English theologian of the 17th century, there is much about John Owen’s life which remains obscured to us today. One of the achievements of Crawford Gribben‘s new book John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat (Oxford University Press, 2017) is to use Owen’s voluminous writings on religion to provide new insights into this critical Puritan figure. Born in 1616, Owen grew up in an Anglican faith increasingly influenced by Arminian doctrine. Though Owen side...
Sheshalatha Reddy, “British Empire and the Literature of Rebellion: Revolting Bodies, Laboring Subjects” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
December 08, 2017 13:20 - 38 minutesSheshalatha Reddy’s British Empire and the Literature of Rebellion: Revolting Bodies, Laboring Subjects (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) examines historical and literary texts relating to three rebellions in the second half of the nineteenth century: the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 in India, the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865 in Jamaica, and the Fenian Rebellion of 1867 in Ireland. The book argues that these rebellions—while arguably unsuccessful in their particular moments—signaled turning points in the...
Padraic Kenney, “Dance in Chains: Political Imprisonment in the Modern World” (Oxford UP, 2017)
December 07, 2017 11:00 - 1 hourThe idea of being a “political prisoner” may seem timeless. If someone was imprisoned for his or her political beliefs, then that person is in some sense a “political prisoner.” Think of the Tower of London and its various occupants. But, as Padraic Kenney points out in his fascinating new book Dance in Chains: Political Imprisonment in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2017), the modern reality of what we might call “political prisoner-ship” is very different and very modern. He sho...
Michael J. Turner” Radicalism and Reputation: The Career of Bronterre O’Brien” (Michigan State UP, 2017)
May 31, 2017 19:16 - 56 minutesFrom humble beginnings James Bronterre O’Brien became one of the leading figures in British radical politics in the first half of the 19th century, thanks in no small measure to his skills as a journalist and writer. In Radicalism and Reputation: The Career of Bronterre O’Brien (Michigan State University Press, 2017), Michael J. Turner examines O’Brien’s ideas and his place in the milieu of the politics of his day. Born in Ireland, the young James O’Brien was a fortunate beneficiary of a prog...
Marilyn Palmer and Ian West, “Technology and the Country House” (Historic England Publishing/U.Chicago, 2016)
May 26, 2017 18:05 - 1 hourFor the aristocracy in Britain and Ireland, country house living was dependent upon the labors of men and women who performed innumerable chores involving cooking, cleaning, and the basic operation of the household. In the 18th century, however, the Industrial Revolution began to change this by introducing new devices and systems that simplified a wide range of duties. In Technology in the Country House (Historic England Publishing, 2016; distributed in the U.S. by University of Chicago Press...
Patrick J. Hayes, “The Civil War Diary of Rev. James Sheeran, Confederate Chaplain and Redemptorist” (Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2016)
May 23, 2017 10:00 - 57 minutesDuring the Civil War Father James Sheeran served as a Catholic chaplain for the 14th Louisiana Infantry. Between his various responsibilities Sheeran kept a journal in which he recounted his experiences with, and observations of, life in the Army of Northern Virginia. As editor of The Civil War Diary of Rev. James Sheeran, Chaplain, Confederate, Redemptorist (Catholic University of America Press, 2016), Patrick J. Hayes has provided readers with the most complete edition yet of Sheeran’s manu...
Garrison Nelson, “John William McCormack: A Political Biography” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)
March 16, 2017 21:39 - 1 hourJohn William McCormack served as Speaker of the House of Representatives throughout most of the 1960s, during which time he shepherded the legislation of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program through the chamber. As Garrison Nelson demonstrates in John William McCormack: A Political Biography (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), this was the culmination of a long political career that stretched back over a half-century to the impoverished South Boston neighborhood where McCormack was raised. There, ...
Ryan Vieira, “Time and Politics: Parliament and the Culture of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the British World” (Oxford UP, 2015)
February 24, 2017 18:00 - 49 minutesHow did the idea of time change during the nineteenth century? In Time and Politics: Parliament and the Culture of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the British World (Oxford University Press, 2015) Ryan Vieira, a sessional lecturer at McMaster University, explores Parliament in the nineteenth century to understand both the bureaucratic structures and the individual parliamentarians’ experiences of time. The understanding of time was shaped by changes in the ideas of industriousnes...
Owen McGee, “Arthur Griffith” (Merrion Press, 2015)
December 23, 2016 10:44 - 1 hourAs the founder of Sinn Fin and a leading architect of Irish independence, Arthur Griffith ranks as one of the founding fathers of modern Ireland. In his book Arthur Griffith (Merrion Press, 2015), Owen McGee offers a biography of the writer and patriot framed within the context of the Irish nationalist movement. The son of a Dublin printer, Griffith was active in nationalist politics at an early age. His own experience in publishing led Griffith to start his own review journals, which served ...
Michael Brown, “The Irish Enlightenment” (Harvard UP, 2015)
December 13, 2016 14:03 - 51 minutesTraditionally histories of the Enlightenment era exclude Ireland in the belief that the movement left little impression on developments. In The Irish Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 2016), Michael Brown challenges this assumption, demonstrating how the ideas and themes of the Enlightenment had a considerable impact upon the history of the country. He begins by examining how the Enlightenment entered the public discourse confessionally, though the debates taking place within the Presb...
Colin Holmes, “Searching for Lord Haw-Haw: The Political Lives of William Joyce” (Routledge, 2016)
November 18, 2016 22:29 - 51 minutesDuring the Second World War millions of Britons tuned in nightly to hear the broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw coming from Nazi Germany. Though the label was broadly applied to a number of English-speaking broadcasters, it was most famously associated with William Joyce. In Searching for Lord Haw-Haw: The Political Lives of William Joyce (Routledge, 2016), Colin Holmes provides a study of Joyce’s life that unravels many of the mysteries and misconceptions surrounding it. He chronicles Joyce’s early ...
Charlotte Mathieson, ed. “Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present” (Palgrave, 2016)
October 27, 2016 17:19 - 48 minutesWhat is the relationship between the sea and culture? In Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present (Palgrave, 2016) , Charlotte Mathieson, a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Surrey, assembles a new collection of essays to explore this question. The book develops the concept of a “sea narrative,” thinking through the connection between this and a variety of forms of cultural production. The essays are eclectic, but unified, reflecting the emerging interest ...
Richard Bourke, “Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke” (Princeton UP, 2015)
September 30, 2016 18:31 - 47 minutesRichard Bourke, Professor in the History of Political Thought in the School of History at Queen Mary University of London, began developing his history of Edmund Burke’s political thought in 1991. Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke (Princeton University Press, 2015) uses Burke as a window into the eighteenth-century articulations of British imperial power, exploring the way that Burke approached relations between Britain, Ireland, America, India, and France. Beginning w...
Terri Diane Halperin, “The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2016)
September 26, 2016 18:19 - 58 minutesIn The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), Terri Diane Halperin has provided a political history of the 1790s and explained the origins of one of the most contentious free speech events in American history. The Alien and Seditions Acts, which were actually four laws enacted in 1798, dramatically tested the principles of free speech in the young republic. Halperin explains the political origins of the controversy, which began in the...
Anne Mac Lellan, “Dorothy Stopford Price: Rebel Doctor” (Irish Academic Press, 2014)
August 25, 2016 09:45 - 58 minutesAmong the achievements of Irish medicine in the twentieth century was ending the persistent epidemic of tuberculosis throughout the island, and one of the central figures in that effort was Dorothy Stopford Price. In her book Dorothy Stopford Price: Rebel Doctor (Irish Academic Press, 2014), Anne Mac Lellan provides readers with an account of the life of a pioneering MD and medical researcher. The daughter of an Anglo-Irish family, she trained as a doctor while Ireland participated in a world...
Patricia McCarthy, “Life in the Country House in Georgian Ireland” (Paul Mellon Centre, 2016)
July 16, 2016 20:58 - 1 hourIn the early 18th century, country houses in Ireland underwent a dramatic physical transformation. In her book Life in the Country House in Georgian Ireland (Paul Mellon Centre, 2016), Patricia McCarthy describes the course of this evolution, as the Palladian style turned aristocratic domiciles in rural Ireland from fortified buildings into elegant structures with columns, porticos, and other classically-influenced touches. From there she goes on to describe the interiors of the homes, the fu...
Dermot Meleady, “John Redmond: The National Leader” (Merrion Press, 2014)
July 08, 2016 10:00 - 1 hourThough in many ways the forgotten man of Irish politics, John Redmond came closer to achieving the long-sought goal of Home Rule for Ireland than had his more illustrious predecessors Daniel O’Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell. In John Redmond: The National Leader (Merrion Press, 2014), Dermot Meleady describes how Redmond led the Irish Parliamentary Party to the cusp of this political victory and how it came apart for him. Picking up where his previous volume, Redmond: The Parnellite left ...
Erik Linstrum, “Ruling Minds: Psychology in the British Empire” (Harvard UP, 2016)
December 30, 2015 19:54 - 58 minutesIn Ruling Minds: Psychology in the British Empire (Harvard University Press, 2016), Erik Linstrum examines how the field of psychology was employed in the service of empire. Linstrum explores the careers of scientists sent to the South Pacific, India, and Africa to verify and define characteristics of white racial superiority. Far from confirming the inferiority of the colonized, psychologists exposed flaws in Britain’s civilizing mission, often doubting or subverting its underlying assumptio...
Samantha Newbery, “Interrogation, Intelligence and Security: Controversial British Techniques” (Manchester UP, 2015)
December 17, 2015 13:48 - 32 minutesInterrogation, Intelligence and Security: Controversial British Techniques (Manchester University Press, 2015) by Samantha Newbery examines issues of history, efficacy, and policy in her thorough examination of British authorities’ use of the “Five Techniques” in Aden, Northern Ireland, and Iraq. Dr. Newbery carefully scrutinizes the historical record, and offers a balanced perspective on controversial interrogation activities throughout the monograph. I look forward to reading her most recen...
Jenny Shaw, “Everyday Life in the Early English Caribbean: Irish, Africans, and the Construction of Difference” (U of Georgia Press, 2013)
September 23, 2015 11:38 - 4 minutesJenny Shaw‘s recent book Everyday Life in the Early English Caribbean: Irish, Africans, and the Construction of Difference (University of Georgia Press, 2013) analyzes how social, religious, and ethnic categories operated in Barbados and the Leeward Islands. She documents the arrival of Irish migrants into the Caribbean who came in... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
David Snowdon, “Writing the Prizefight: Pierce Egan’s Boxiana World” (Peter Lang, 2013)
September 04, 2015 18:27 - 51 minutesWhen ESPN anchor Stuart Scott passed away from cancer this past January, he was widely hailed for his innovative style, which mixed heavy does of African American slang and pop culture references. His signature phrases are now commonly used terms in the American lexicon: “As cool as the other side... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Paula Kane, “Sister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America” (UNC Press, 2013)
March 31, 2015 10:44 - 59 minutesSister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America (UNC Press, 2013) is a detailed journey into the life of Margaret Reilly, an American Irish-Catholic from New York who entered the Convent of the Good Shepherd in 1921, taking the name Sister Crown of Thorns. During the 1920s and 1930s, Sister Thorn became known as a stigmatic who bled the wounds of Christ. In this microhistory of Thorn’s story, Professor Paula Kane immerses readers in a world in transition, where interwar Catholics retain...
Jacob N. Shapiro, “The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations” (Princeton UP, 2013)
November 27, 2014 13:35 - 42 minutesJacob N. Shapiro‘s The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations (Princeton University Press, 2013) is a welcome addition to a field that sometimes depicts terrorist activity as an unfamiliar, idiosyncratic phenomenon. Shapiro convincingly argues that, far from being alien to our everyday experience, many terrorist organizations must necessarily deal with the bureaucracy, infighting, and tradeoffs which permeate familiar government and corporate entities. The style of the boo...
Terry Golway, “Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics” (Liveright, 2014)
October 31, 2014 12:04 - 54 minutesFor most Americans, Tammany Hall is a symbol of all that was dishonest, corrupt, illiberal, and venal about urban government and the political machines that ran it in the past, a shorthand for larceny on a grand scale. Not so, says Terry Golway. In his new book Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics (Liveright, 2014) Golway argues that Tammany, a popular nickname for the Democratic organization of the County of New York (better known as Manhattan), introduced ...
Colette Colligan, “A Publisher’s Paradise: Expatriate Literary Culture in Paris 1890-1960” (University of Massachusetts Press, 2014)
March 10, 2014 11:31 - 59 minutesFrom the end of the nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth, Paris was a center for the publication of numerous English-language books, including many of a sexually explicit, pornographic nature. Colette Colligan‘s new book, A Publisher’s Paradise: Expatriate Literary Culture in Paris, 1890-1960 (University of Massachusetts Press, 2014) explores the rich and fascinating history of these “Paris editions” across seven decades of literary publishing in France, in English. Troubli...
Nathaniel Millett, “The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World” (UP of Florida, 2013)
December 20, 2013 18:19 - 51 minutesThis is a very timely book, coming as it does in the midst of the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 — the war that gave birth to the maroon community of Prospect Bluff, Florida. In his book The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World (UP of Florida, 2013), Nathaniel Millett shows how an assortment of free African-Americans, escaped slaves, Africans, and Afro-Indians created a thriving, highly organized community in the shadow of the expanding slave empir...
Benedetta Berti, “Armed Political Organizations: From Conflict to Integration” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013)
October 28, 2013 06:00 - 27 minutesBenedetta Berti is the author of Armed Political Organizations: from Conflict to Integration (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). Berti is a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and a lecturer at Tel Aviv University. The book investigates the inner workings of three organizations: Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Irish Republican Army. Berti’s intricate research reveals the history and institutional components of each group beyond what we have come to accept about...
Bernard Kelly, “Returning Home: Irish Ex-Servicemen and the Second World War” (Merrion, 2012)
February 21, 2013 15:39 - 57 minutesThe Republic of Ireland (aka The Irish Free State, Eire) declared neutrality during the Second World War. That wasn’t particularly unusual: Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland did too. Yet around 60,000 “neutral” Irish volunteered to fight on one side (with the Allies, in this case). That was unusual. After the war, most of the Irish volunteers remained in the UK. But 12,000 of them came back to Ireland. In Returning Home: Irish Ex-Servicemen and the Second World War (Merrion, 2012), Ber...
Maurice Punch, “State Violence, Collusion and the Troubles: Counter Insurgency, Government Deviance and Northern Ireland” (Pluto Press, 2012)
October 16, 2012 19:40 - 56 minutesToday we spoke to Maurice Punch about his new book: State Violence, Collusion and the Troubles: Counter Insurgency, Government Deviance and Northern Ireland (Pluto Press, 2012). The Troubles refers to the conflict in Northern Ireland between the IRA and the British government. The government response to the terrorist attacks involved a broad range of policing, intelligence and military agencies, including the SAS. There are many books about the actions of terrorist groups but this book looks ...
Richard Wilson, “Inside the Divide: One City, Two Teams, the Old Firm” (Canongate, 2012)
March 22, 2012 19:36 - 1 hourAlabama-Auburn. Maple Leafs-Canadiens. Boca Juniors-River Plate. Carlton-Collingwood.Fenerbahce-Galatasaray. Great rivalries are the catalysts of national sporting cultures. They are the high point of a season, fueling emotions as well as ticket sales and media hype. The most famous rivalries typically have bearing for league standings and championships. But many are also... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Teddy Jamieson, “Whose Side Are You On?: Sport, the Troubles, and Me” (Yellow Jersey Press, 2011)
October 17, 2011 16:31 - 1 hourHere’s a sport quiz for you. Name a world-class athlete who hailed from the state of Nebraska: an Olympic champion, a hall of famer, someone who was among the very best at his or her game. (And no sneaking over to Google!) If you’re stumped, as I was, you’ll find... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nell Irvin Painter, “The History of White People” (Norton, 2010)
January 14, 2011 20:06 - 1 hourWe in the West tend to classify people by the color of their skin, or what we casually call “race.” But, as Nell Irvin Painter shows in her fascinating new book The History of White People (Norton, 2010), it wasn’t always so. The Greeks didn’t do it, at least very seriously. The Romans didn’t do it, at least very often. And the folks of the Middle Ages didn’t do it, at least with much gusto. In fact, the people who invented the modern concept of “race” and the classification of people by skin...
Fearghal McGarry, “The Rising: Ireland, Easter 1916” (Oxford UP, 2010)
May 24, 2010 17:23 - 1 hourSometimes when you win you lose. That’s called a Pyrrhic victory. But sometimes when you lose you win. We don’t have a name for that (at least as far as I know). But we might call it an “Easter Rising victory” after the Irish Republican revolt of 1916. The Republicans took over several buildings in Dublin, declared an Irish republic, and then were promptly obliterated by the British Army. Their leaders were executed, their republic disbanded, and their enemies remained in control of the islan...