Ireland Books: The Macmillan Atlas of Irish History

I love maps, always have. I can spend hours pouring over maps of places both strange and familiar, and I often do (usually with no idea where ‘I’ am). And if a picture is worth a thousand words, a map must likewise be worth at least several hundred. So when I found this book on the shelf at a used book store in Manassas, it was a easy decision to tuck it under my arm with plans to bring it home with me.

Starting with a map of Celtic Ireland dating back to the Iron Age, and progressing through centuries of Viking, Norman, and English invaders, and reaching up to Ireland in the ’90s, each page offers a map of Ireland and one-page of text on a particular era. By itself, the text would be something like a Cliff-Notes version of Irish History, but the complementary maps make all the difference. It’s still a quick skim and fast read, but one that makes up what it lacks in words with some really great maps that give a birds-eye view of Ireland’s history.