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Here, in one complete volume, is the depth and breadth of the great island nation and its people represented in an easily browsed, friendly format. From the Abbey Theatre to the Dublin storyteller Zozimus; from the origin of the Troubles to the origin of the limerick; from the stunning beauty of Connemara to the shattering tragedy of Bloody Sunday; from the greatest writers of the English language to the “confrontational television” of Gay Byrne’s The Late Late Show–every aspect of Irish culture, geography, and history is collected and annotated in more than 900 entries from A to Z. Readers will encounter heroes and terrorists, poets and politicians, all of Ireland’s counties, anci...
Edward Darby has everything a man could hope for: meaningful work, a loving wife, and a beloved daughter. With a rising career as a partner at an esteemed gallery, he strives not to let ambition, money, power, and his dark past corrode the sanctuary of his domestic and private life. Influenced by his father, a brilliant Romantics scholar, Edward has always been more of a purist than an opportunist. But when a celebrated artist controlled by her insecurities betrays him, and another very different artist awakens his heart and stirs up secrets from his past, Edward will find himself unmoored from his marriage, his work, and the memory of his beloved father. And when the finalist of an important prize are announced, and the desperate artists maneuver to seek its validation, Edward soon learns that betrayal comes in many forms, and that he may be hurtling toward an act that challenges his own notions about what comprises a life worth living. A compelling odyssey of a man unhinged by his ideals, The Prize is also an unflinching portrait of a marriage struggling against the corroding tide of time and the proximity to the treacherous fault line between art and money.
Jill Bialosky follows her acclaimed debut collection, The End of Desire, with this powerful sequence of poems that probes the subterranean depths of eros. Gerald Stern has called Bialosky “the poet of the secret garden, the place, at once, of grace and sadness,” and here she enters that garden again, blending the classical with the contemporary in bold considerations of desire, fertility, virginity, and childbirth. Written against the idealizations of romantic love and motherhood, she tells of the loss of one child and the birth of another, the fierce passions of life before children, the seductions of suicide, and the comforts of art. Throughout, she braids and unbraids the distinct yet...
Fleeing a devastating personal loss, Rosie takes a job as an au pair with a Parisian family, and soon learns valuable lessons about family and culture, and memory and longing.
When American sportswriter Andy Mendlowitz took a summer vacation to Ireland, his itinerary included visiting medieval castles and drinking dark beer. He soon discovered a world where big-time sports aren't yet a business, but still a game. Ireland's rough-and-tumble pastimes of hurling and Gaelic football attract crowds of up to 80,000 fans a contest. The high-profile players, though, are amateurs. They train as professionals but must work fulltime jobs to pay the bills. The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) also lacks free agency or trades-you simply play for your hometown team, even if you move away. Amazed by this concept, and burned out at work, Mendlowitz quit his job and moved to Ireland for eight months His aim was to get excited again by understanding what drives these athletes. Along the way, he met interesting characters and learned how the sports intersect with the ancient Irish language, burgeoning economy and the Troubles in Northern Ireland. From big cities like Belfast, Dublin and Cork to tiny rural parishes, Mendlowitz paints a vivid picture of Ireland and the joy of competing.
As Moscow bureau chief for Business Week magazine, Rose Brady was on the scene during the fall of the Soviet Union and the key early years of Russia’s transformation from a socialist state to a market economy. Brady interviewed scores of major political and economic figures, entrepreneurs, and ordinary Russian citizens, all of whom confronted enormous changes during the first five years of economic reform. In this compelling book, Brady provides one of the first accounts of Russia’s transition period written by an observer without a personal stake in the reform efforts’ outcome. The author takes readers into the factories, stores, banks, impromptu markets, homes, and schools of Russia,...
In February of 1970, Thomas Lynch, aged twenty-one, bought a one-way ticket to Ireland. He landed in the townland of Moveen, at the edge of the ocean in West Clare, outside the thatched cottage that his great-grandfather had left late in the nineteenth century with a one-way ticket to America. Tommy and Nora Lynch, Thomas Lynch's elderly, unmarried, distant cousins welcomed the young American 'home'. In the words of the author, 'it changed my life'. Booking Passage is part travelogue, part cultural study, part memoir and elegy, part guidebook for what Lynch calls 'fellow pilgrims' working their way through their own and the larger histories. It is a magnificent hymn of praise to Ireland.
All places undergo change, but in few has this change been quite as sweeping as Ireland – both the independent Republic of Ireland and dependent Northern Ireland – so it is good to see where it is heading at present. Obviously, that has to be judged on the background of where it is coming from, not only over the past decade or so but over centuries and, indeed, millennia. This new edition of Historical Dictionary of Ireland is an excellent resource for discovering the history of Ireland. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The cross-referenced dictionary section has over 600 entries on significant persons, places and events, political parties and institutions (including the Catholic church) with period forays into literature, music and the arts. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Ireland.
The strongest collection yet from this widely praised poet is about the central players in our lives, our relationships over time—between mother and son, mother and daughter—and how one generation of relationships informs and shapes the next. The opening sequence, “Manhood,” looks at the insular world of baseball, shedding light on the complexities of gender, boyhood, and coming-of-age. The poet captures the electrifying, proud language of baseball talk, channeling the tone and approach of the young men she observes as a mother, and bringing poignancy and deeper understanding to the transaction between herself and the young men she sees growing into adulthood. “American Comedy” is a sonnet sequence about the absurdities and realities of modern domestic life, while figures in literature are the players in “Interlude.” The final section, “The Players,” becomes a forceful and searing revelation about the legacy of generations. Exploring the nature of attachment on many levels, The Players brings us Jill Bialosky at her best, in poems that find a new language to describe the rich and universal story that is modern motherhood.