The Reluctant Taoiseach


Book Description

John A. Costello remains the most elusive of our former Taoisigh, despite his enormous contribution to Irish history. He declared the Republic, led the country's first ever coalition government, and faced the Mother and Child Crisis. A surprise choice who battled against taking the job, Costello was the Reluctant Taoiseach. Historian and political correspondent David McCullagh charts the life of this fascinating man, using his personal archive of papers, as well as interviews with former colleagues, family and friends. McCullagh offers new insights into a political career which stretched from Independence to the end of the 1960s, including the Commonwealth Conferences of the 1920s, to the new Constitution of 1937, and Governments in the 1940s and 1950s. Politician, barrister, Attorney General, politician, family man--The Reluctant Taoiseach takes a fresh and revealing look at the life of a man at the centre of politics and law during one of the most turbulent periods in Irish history. "This is the best historical biography in recent years" Maurice Manning, Irish Mail on Sunday "In David McCullagh, John Costello has found the best biographer he could possibly have hoped for" Andrew Lynch, Sunday Business Post Agenda "A biography that is not just hugely authoritative but also highly readable" Shane Coleman, The Sunday Tribune




De Valera: Rule


Book Description

In this, the concluding volume of David McCullagh's monumental new life of the revolutionary and statesman, we join De Valera in 1932 as he takes the reins of power in the first Fianna Fáil government, and follow him as he confronts one challenge after another – the Economic War, the drafting of Bunreacht na hÉireann, the Emergency, the North, the declaration of the Republic, economic stagnation in the 1950s – and sets about gradually remaking a sovereign Ireland in his own image.Beautifully written and deeply researched, McCullagh's De Valera is a provocative and nuanced portrait of Ireland's most enigmatic leader, as well as a balanced assessment of his role in shaping our national self-image.







Radical or Redundant?


Book Description

While the type of small political party In Ireland has varied, their fate, it seems, has not. Although some enjoy a brief time in the sun, termination is the long-term prospects for all minor parties. The usual pattern is a speedy ascent, an impact on the political system including a time in government, followed by a prolonged termination. This book examines this pattern of evolution for minor, or small, parties in Irish politics. As the Irish state has changed, so too have the types of parties that have emerged. With the first-time entry of the Greens into government in 2007, their wipeout in 2011, the termination of the Progressive Democrats in 2009, and the failure of a new party to emerge despite the on-going financial crisis, the time is ripe for this analysis.




Making the Difference?


Book Description

In 2011, on the cusp of its centenary year, the Labour Party recorded its greatest ever electoral success, with 37 TDs elected and a President. In doing so the party has succeeded, temporarily at least, in breaking free from the old two-and-a-half party system. But, why, for its first century, did Labour struggle to match its ambition? This series of essays to mark the party's centenary assesses the challenges facing Labour in a deeply conservative country, where echoes of civil war and Catholic Church hegemony have dominated the political landscape. Leading writers from the fields of journalism, history and social reform examine the failings, splits and contradictions of Ireland's oldest political party alongside the social and economic achievements to which the Labour Party lays claim. Contributors: Ivana Bacik; Michael Laffan; Ronan O'Brien; Stephen Collins; David McCullagh; Eunan O'Halpin; Paul Daly; Ciara Meeha;n Niamh Puirseil; Diarmaid Ferriter; William Mulligan; Kevin Rafter; Eamon Gilmore; William Murphy ;Jane Suiter. All royalties to Barnardos.




Saving the State


Book Description

When Fine Gael entered a coalition government with Fianna Fáil in 2020 the party did what would have been unthinkable for its forefathers, who had fought and won a bitter civil war to establish the institutions of an independent Irish state almost a century earlier. Saving the State is the remarkable story of Fine Gael from its origins in the fraught days of civil war to the political convulsions of 2020. Written by political journalist Stephen Collins and historian Ciara Meehan, Saving the State draws on a wealth of original historical research and a range of interviews with key political figures to chart the evolution of the party through the lens of its successive leaders. From the special place occupied by Michael Collins in the party's pantheon of heroes to the dark era of the Blueshirts, and from its role as the founder of the state to its claim to be the defender of the state, the ways that members perceive their own history is also explored. Saving the State is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how Fine Gael came to be the party it is today, the ways in which it interprets and presents its own history, and the role that it played in shaping modern Ireland.




A Makeshift Majority


Book Description




Relics


Book Description

World-renowned zoologist and photographer Naskrecki leads readers on a time-lapse tour that renders Earth's colossal age comprehensible, visible in creatures and habitats that have persisted, nearly untouched, for hundreds of millions of years.




Orderly and Humane


Book Description

The award-winning history of 12 million German-speaking civilians in Europe who were driven from their homes after WWII: “a major achievement” (New Republic). Immediately after the Second World War, the victorious Allies authorized the forced relocation of ethnic Germans from their homes across central and southern Europe to Germany. The numbers were almost unimaginable: between 12 and 14 million civilians, most of them women and children. And the losses were horrifying: at least five hundred thousand people, and perhaps many more, died while detained in former concentration camps, locked in trains, or after arriving in Germany malnourished, and homeless. In this authoritative and objective account, historian R.M. Douglas examines an aspect of European history that few have wished to confront, exploring how the forced migrations were conceived, planned, and executed, and how their legacy reverberates throughout central Europe today. The first comprehensive history of this immense manmade catastrophe, Orderly and Humane is an important study of the largest recorded episode of what we now call "ethnic cleansing." It may also be the most significant untold story of the World War II.




Europeanization


Book Description

The theme of Europeanization has, in recent years, come to figure prominently in a wide range of social science analyses concerning both the process of European integration and broader patterns of change in contemporary Europe. Yet, though increasingly a staple of academic discourse, no widely accepted definition of the term has emerged. This volume of the European Studies represents one of the first interdisciplinary attempts to examine the manifold uses and possibilities of a Europeanization problematic. An international team of contributors drawn from the disciplines of Politics, Sociology, History, Anthropology, and Law explore processes of institution-building and identity formation through the optic of Europeanization. Their work offers new insights as regards the development of European integration, pointing particularly to the need for a genuinely interdisciplinary European Studies which encompasses, but is not limited to, the study of the European Union.