Joe Carroll It is 40 years since Ireland joined the European Economic Community (EEC) so virtually two generations have little knowledge of the prolonged campaign from 1961 to 1973 to achieve membership. When asked to vote on the various referenda on widening and deepening the now European Union, very few realise what a struggle it was…

Peter Hegarty With the election triumph of Angela Merkel it is clear that German attitudes to the economic collapse and its aftermath will remain dominant. In his new book Faisal Islam explores the causes and effects of the Great Recession with the clarity and common sense we have come to expect from the highly-rated economics…

It has been quite clear in recent years that some Catholics hold what would have once been considered heterodox beliefs about the Eucharist. This was, for many traditional minded people, demonstrated by Mary McAleese taking the sacrament in St Patrick’s Cathedral. It is significant then that this book is subtitled “an aid to Christian unity” — such…

J. Anthony Gaughan This is a remarkable book about a remarkable Kerryman. Dick Fitzgerald was born in Killarney on October 2, 1882. He was educated by the Presentation Brothers at their school in Killarney and their commercial college in Cork. Thereafter he was engaged in his parents’ export business. A keen footballer from his earliest years, for over…

Maeve Binchy, who died a year ago, will still be much missed by her countless readers. It seems very soon for any really full and deep searching account of her life to appear. Certainly this is not it. Indeed Piers Dudgeonís book reads more like a fanís notebook than a true biography. He has been…

It is a common complaint that children here and in England, where this book originates, have very confused ideas of history. This profusely illustrated large format book will go some way to remedying that. With a significant input from the Smithsonian in Washington DC, it begins some six and half millenniums ago and comes right…

Though the text is compact, the range of art over time which some five scholars have put together gives a revealing appreciation of what art has been since earliest times, enhanced by many fine and often unusual illustrations. As a basic text, it covers a great deal, though one has qualms that fully a quarter of…