New Books in Irish Studies
Episodes
Alicia Turner, "The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk Who Faced Down the British Empire" (Oxford UP, 2020)
31 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Buddhism has always been a world religion, but its popularity in the West really dates only from the late nineteenth century, when much of the Buddhis...
Nadine El-Enany, "Bordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire" (Manchester UP, 2020)
30 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How can we understand the legacy of colonialism within contemporary society? In Bordering Britain Law, Race and Empire (Manchester University Press, 2...
Sarah Stockwell, "The British End of the British Empire" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
20 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How did de-colonialization impact the United Kingdom itself? That is a topic that Professor of Imperial & Commonwealth History at King’s College, Lo...
Paul Lay, "Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of Cromwell’s Protectorate" (Head of Zeus, 2020)
03 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s episode, we catch up with Paul Lay, editor of the leading journal History Today, and a senior research fellow in early modern history at ...
Gerald Dawe, "The Sound of the Shuttle: Essays on Cultural Belonging and Protestantism in Northern Ireland" (Irish Academic Press, 2020)
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of the leading poets of his generation, Gerald Dawe is also a fellow emeritus and professor of English at Trinity College Dublin. Throughout his l...
Jeremy Black, "Geographies of an Imperial Power: The British World, 1688-1815" (Indiana UP, 2018)
24 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talk to Jeremy Black, professor of history at Exeter University, UK, about two of his most recent book projects, both of which relate to the ...
Seán Crosson, "Gaelic Games on Film" (Cork UP, 2019)
30 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Seán Crosson, leader of the Sport and Exercise Research Group at NUI Galway, co-director of the MA in Sports Journalism and Co...
Richard Whatmore, "Terrorists, Anarchists, and Republicans: The Genevans and the Irish in Time of Revolution" (Princeton UP, 2019)
11 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1798, members of the United Irishmen were massacred by the British amid the crumbling walls of a half-built town near Waterford in Ireland. Many of...
Hannah Weiss Muller, "Subjects and Sovereign: Bonds of Belonging in the Eighteenth-Century British Empire" (Oxford UP, 2017)
15 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
There is no denying that the public remains fascinated with monarchy. In the United Kingdom, the royal family commands the headlines, but paradoxicall...
Laura Robson and Arie Dubnov, "Partitions: A Transnational History of Twentieth-Century Territorial Separatism" (Stanford UP, 2019)
08 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The practice of Partition understood as the physical division of territory along ethno-religious lines into separate nation-states is often regarded a...
Kirsteen M. MacKenzie, "The Solemn League and Covenant of the Three Kingdoms and the Cromwellian Union 1643-1663" (Routledge, 2018)
12 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Kirsteen M. MacKenzie, an historian who has taught for many years at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, has published a definitive account of the r...
Guy Beiner, "Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster" (Oxford UP, 2018)
21 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Guy 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 ext...
Isobel O’Hare, "all this can be yours" (University of Hell Press, 2019)
15 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Isobel O’Hare’s all this can be yours (University of Hell Press, 2019) presents a series of erasures crafted from celebrity sexual assault apologi...
Geraldine Heng, "The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
26 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press 2018), Geraldine Heng collects a remarkable array of medieval approac...
Andrew R. Holmes, "The Irish Presbyterian Mind: Conservative Theology, Evangelical Experience, and Modern Criticism, 1830-1930" (Oxford UP, 2018)
04 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier today I caught up with my colleague at Queen’s University Belfast, Andrew R. Holmes, to discuss his outstanding new book, The Irish Presbyte...
Hidetaka Hirota, "Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy" (Oxford UP, 2018)
23 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Hidetaka Hirota is an Assistant Professor in the Institute for Advanced Study at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. Prior to his current position, he ...
Rory Cormac, "Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy" (Oxford UP, 2018)
27 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the decades following the Second World War, the British government increasingly turned to covert operations as a means of achieving their foreign p...
Suman Seth, "Difference and Disease: Medicine, Race, and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
19 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Suman Seth's new book Difference and Disease: Medicine, Race, and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2018)provides a n...
Diarmaid MacCulloch, "Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life" (Viking, 2018)
29 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Despite ranking among the most influential people in English history, Thomas Cromwell has long eluded biographers and historians. In Thomas Cromwell: ...
Donald H. Akenson, “Exporting the Rapture: John Nelson Darby and the Victorian Conquest of North American Evangelicalism” (Oxford UP/McGill-Queen’s UP, 2018)
01 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Don Akenson, who is Douglas Professor of Canadian and Colonial History at Queen’s University, Ontario, is one of the most eminent scholars of Irish ...
John Mackay, “The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle Over the Greatest Riches in the American West” (Scribner, 2018)
20 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
John Mackay’s life began humbly, immigrating as a child from an impoverished Irish household to New York City where he worked selling newspapers in ...
Steve R. Dunn, “Bayly’s War: The Battle for the Western Approaches in the First World War” (Naval Institute Press, 2018)
09 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Though Great Britain’s warships ruled the waves throughout the First World War, their greatest challenge came from just underneath them. Nowhere was...
Ray Cashman, “Packy Jim: Folklore and Worldview on the Irish Border” (U Wisconsin Press, 2016)
17 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How do individuals on national or societal peripheries make use of tradition and to what ends? How can narratives discursively construct a complex wor...
Crawford Gribben, “John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat” (Oxford UP, 2017)
05 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Though 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 ac...
Sheshalatha Reddy, “British Empire and the Literature of Rebellion: Revolting Bodies, Laboring Subjects” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
08 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Sheshalatha Reddy’s British Empire and the Literature of Rebellion: Revolting Bodies, Laboring Subjects (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) examines historic...
Padraic Kenney, “Dance in Chains: Political Imprisonment in the Modern World” (Oxford UP, 2017)
07 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The idea of being a “political prisoner” may seem timeless. If someone was imprisoned for his or her political beliefs, then that person is in som...
Michael J. Turner” Radicalism and Reputation: The Career of Bronterre O’Brien” (Michigan State UP, 2017)
31 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
From humble beginnings James Bronterre O’Brien became one of the leading figures in British radical politics in the first half of the 19th century, ...
Marilyn Palmer and Ian West, “Technology and the Country House” (Historic England Publishing/U.Chicago, 2016)
26 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
For the aristocracy in Britain and Ireland, country house living was dependent upon the labors of men and women who performed innumerable chores invol...
Patrick J. Hayes, “The Civil War Diary of Rev. James Sheeran, Confederate Chaplain and Redemptorist” (Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2016)
23 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
During the Civil War Father James Sheeran served as a Catholic chaplain for the 14th Louisiana Infantry. Between his various responsibilities Sheeran ...
Garrison Nelson, “John William McCormack: A Political Biography” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)
16 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
John William McCormack served as Speaker of the House of Representatives throughout most of the 1960s, during which time he shepherded the legislation...
Ryan Vieira, “Time and Politics: Parliament and the Culture of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the British World” (Oxford UP, 2015)
24 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How did the idea of time change during the nineteenth century? In Time and Politics: Parliament and the Culture of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Bri...
Owen McGee, “Arthur Griffith” (Merrion Press, 2015)
23 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
As 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 h...
Michael Brown, “The Irish Enlightenment” (Harvard UP, 2015)
13 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Traditionally histories of the Enlightenment era exclude Ireland in the belief that the movement left little impression on developments. In The Irish ...
Colin Holmes, “Searching for Lord Haw-Haw: The Political Lives of William Joyce” (Routledge, 2016)
18 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
During 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...
Charlotte Mathieson, ed. “Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present” (Palgrave, 2016)
27 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What is the relationship between the sea and culture? In Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present (Palgrave, 2016) , Charlotte Math...
Richard Bourke, “Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke” (Princeton UP, 2015)
30 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Bourke, Professor in the History of Political Thought in the School of History at Queen Mary University of London, began developing his histor...
Terri Diane Halperin, “The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2016)
26 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), Terri Diane Halperin has provided a political...
Anne Mac Lellan, “Dorothy Stopford Price: Rebel Doctor” (Irish Academic Press, 2014)
25 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Among the achievements of Irish medicine in the twentieth century was ending the persistent epidemic of tuberculosis throughout the island, and one of...
Patricia McCarthy, “Life in the Country House in Georgian Ireland” (Paul Mellon Centre, 2016)
16 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 18th century, country houses in Ireland underwent a dramatic physical transformation. In her book Life in the Country House in Georgian I...
Dermot Meleady, “John Redmond: The National Leader” (Merrion Press, 2014)
08 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Though 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 ...
Erik Linstrum, “Ruling Minds: Psychology in the British Empire” (Harvard UP, 2016)
30 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In Ruling Minds: Psychology in the British Empire (Harvard University Press, 2016), Erik Linstrum examines how the field of psychology was employed in...
Samantha Newbery, “Interrogation, Intelligence and Security: Controversial British Techniques” (Manchester UP, 2015)
17 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Interrogation, Intelligence and Security: Controversial British Techniques (Manchester University Press, 2015) by Samantha Newbery examines issues of ...
Jenny Shaw, “Everyday Life in the Early English Caribbean: Irish, Africans, and the Construction of Difference” (U of Georgia Press, 2013)
23 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Jenny Shaw‘s recent book Everyday Life in the Early English Caribbean: Irish, Africans, and the Construction of Difference (University of Georgia Pr...
David Snowdon, “Writing the Prizefight: Pierce Egan’s Boxiana World” (Peter Lang, 2013)
04 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
When ESPN anchor Stuart Scott passed away from cancer this past January, he was widely hailed for his innovative style, which mixed heavy does of Afri...
Paula Kane, “Sister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America” (UNC Press, 2013)
31 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Sister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America (UNC Press, 2013) is a detailed journey into the life of Margaret Reilly, an American Irish-Cath...
Jacob N. Shapiro, “The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations” (Princeton UP, 2013)
27 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Jacob N. Shapiro‘s The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations (Princeton University Press, 2013) is a welcome addition to a fi...
Terry Golway, “Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics” (Liveright, 2014)
31 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
For most Americans, Tammany Hall is a symbol of all that was dishonest, corrupt, illiberal, and venal about urban government and the political machine...
Colette Colligan, “A Publisher’s Paradise: Expatriate Literary Culture in Paris 1890-1960” (University of Massachusetts Press, 2014)
10 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
From the end of the nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth, Paris was a center for the publication of numerous English-language books,...
Nathaniel Millett, “The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World” (UP of Florida, 2013)
20 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
This 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 commu...
Benedetta Berti, “Armed Political Organizations: From Conflict to Integration” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013)
28 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Benedetta Berti is the author of Armed Political Organizations: from Conflict to Integration (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). Berti is a resear...
Bernard Kelly, “Returning Home: Irish Ex-Servicemen and the Second World War” (Merrion, 2012)
21 Feb 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The Republic of Ireland (aka The Irish Free State, Eire) declared neutrality during the Second World War. That wasn’t particularly unusual: Portugal...
Maurice Punch, “State Violence, Collusion and the Troubles: Counter Insurgency, Government Deviance and Northern Ireland” (Pluto Press, 2012)
16 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Today we spoke to Maurice Punch about his new book: State Violence, Collusion and the Troubles: Counter Insurgency, Government Deviance and Northern I...
Richard Wilson, “Inside the Divide: One City, Two Teams, the Old Firm” (Canongate, 2012)
22 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Alabama-Auburn. Maple Leafs-Canadiens. Boca Juniors-River Plate. Carlton-Collingwood.Fenerbahce-Galatasaray. Great rivalries are the catalysts of nati...
Teddy Jamieson, “Whose Side Are You On?: Sport, the Troubles, and Me” (Yellow Jersey Press, 2011)
17 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Here’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...
Nell Irvin Painter, “The History of White People” (Norton, 2010)
14 Jan 2011
Contributed by Lukas
We 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 fascin...
Fearghal McGarry, “The Rising: Ireland, Easter 1916” (Oxford UP, 2010)
24 May 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes 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 ...