Irish History Book

IamtheWalrus

I would like to educate myself on Irish history. Can anyone recommend me a comprehensive Irish history book? I'd like to read a summary of its history as opposed to one particular part.

Any suggestions welcome.

Walrus

tac foley

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. That's a mite difficult without getting a book written by one or the other 'hair-on-fire' brigade, but this one might just do the trick -

'A short history of Ireland' by John O'Beirne Ranelagh.

The Times LS said of it - 'Abook which compresses the Irish story from pre-history to post-Sunningdale with notable dexterity and justice of scale [the author] attains a remarkably dispassionate detachment of tone'.

Try it and see.

tac

IamtheWalrus

tac foley wrote: »

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. That's a mite difficult without getting a book written by one or the other 'hair-on-fire' brigade, but this one might just do the trick -

'A short history of Ireland' by John O'Beirne Ranelagh.

The Times LS said of it - 'Abook which compresses the Irish story from pre-history to post-Sunningdale with notable dexterity and justice of scale [the author] attains a remarkably dispassionate detachment of tone'.

Try it and see.

tac

Thanks for the suggestion.

GRMA

http://archive.org/details/historyofireland00

There's an excellent free one.

There are others for the twentieth century.

Bannasidhe

As a professional historian I couldn't really recommend one book but wholeheartedly recommend the New History of Ireland series published by Oxford University Press.

They can be expensive to buy new but reasonably priced copies can be picked up 2nd hand from sites such as abebooks