Ireland Today

The Uncivil Wars, first published in 1983, continues to stand as the most thorough and balanced account of the troubles in Northern Ireland available. This new edition covers recent developments, including the prospects for peace.

“I know of no other task that an adult will undertake in life that is as demanding, challenging, responsible, complicated and never-ending as parenting ... [but], like the vast majority of parents, I had no real preparation for parenthood and received no training or direct help during the whole process.” Raising a child is not an easy task, and there is no simple rulebook to follow. The goal of any parent is to guide and nurture their child from babyhood to becoming a mature, capable, independent, responsible and self-sufficient adult, but how do you achieve this, especially during the tricky teenage years? In this thoughtful and compassionate book, John Lonergan shares his own parenting philosophy, developed over twenty years of talking to and with parents and teenagers. He emphasises the importance of communication and consensus, arguing that without good communication you cannot be a successful parent, and tackling subjects like: Developing your parenting objectivesThe importance of self-esteemAccepting your child for who they areBullyingUnderage drinking and drug useSuicideSex education and sexuality Parenting: Raising Your Child in Ireland Today will help you guide your child in their journey to adulthood. While it is primarily aimed at the parents of pre-teens and teens, it is relevant to children of all ages. It will also prove inspirational to teachers, coaches, youth club leaders, other family members and all those who interact with children on a regular basis.

The third edition addresses the most important current topics in Irish politics. It fills a major gap in the academic literature on Irish politics, providing students with a comprehensive Introduction to the issues dominating debates in both parts of Ireland. The recent emergence of emigration, environmental risk and technological changes on to the political agenda is reflected. It also revisits Ireland's economic performance, the peace process and the policy areas of health, housing and industrial relations.

Through international and interdisciplinary perspectives, The Catholic Church in Ireland Today considers the problems facing the contemporary Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. This book offers a thorough analysis of the Church’s present condition and indicates directions the Church could take to begin addressing the multiple challenges it faces.

The story of Ireland today with 388 photographs, including 108 in full color.

“[L]ike reading a great tragicomic Irish novel.” —James Wood, The New Yorker “Masterful . . . astonishing.” —Cullen Murphy, The Atlantic "A landmark history . . . Leavened by the brilliance of O'Toole's insights and wit.” —Claire Messud, Harper’s Winner • 2021 An Post Irish Book Award — Nonfiction Book of the Year • from the judges: “The most remarkable Irish nonfiction book I’ve read in the last 10 years”; “[A] book for the ages.” A celebrated Irish writer’s magisterial, brilliantly insightful chronicle of the wrenching transformations that dragged his homeland into the modern world. Fintan O’Toole was born in the year the revolution began. It was 1958, and the Irish government—in despair, because all the young people were leaving—opened the country to foreign investment and popular culture. So began a decades-long, ongoing experiment with Irish national identity. In We Don’t Know Ourselves, O’Toole, one of the Anglophone world’s most consummate stylists, weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary “backwater” to an almost totally open society—perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history. Born to a working-class family in the Dublin suburbs, O’Toole served as an altar boy and attended a Christian Brothers school, much as his forebears did. He was enthralled by American Westerns suddenly appearing on Irish television, which were not that far from his own experience, given that Ireland’s main export was beef and it was still not unknown for herds of cattle to clatter down Dublin’s streets. Yet the Westerns were a sign of what was to come. O’Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish, women in particular. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism. In O’Toole’s telling, America became a lodestar, from John F. Kennedy’s 1963 visit, when the soon-to-be martyred American president was welcomed as a native son, to the emergence of the Irish technology sector in the late 1990s, driven by American corporations, which set Ireland on the path toward particular disaster during the 2008 financial crisis. A remarkably compassionate yet exacting observer, O’Toole in coruscating prose captures the peculiar Irish habit of “deliberate unknowing,” which allowed myths of national greatness to persist even as the foundations were crumbling. Forty years in the making, We Don’t Know Ourselves is a landmark work, a memoir and a national history that ultimately reveals how the two modes are entwined for all of us.