Category: Books

It would be easy to imagine a book with a title like the one this has, would be a dry and dull academic volume. It is anything but. The book does cover ‘2500 years of Irish history through the lives of some fifty people’, the author succeed in his stated goal of sharing this history as ‘a collection of stories that one might share across a kitchen table about people we once knew.’ The people in the stores range from characters in Irish mythology, to leaders in Ireland’s fight for independence, to the lead singer of the Irish rock group U2, Bono.

This was a very fast read, as each of the stories typically ran just a few pages, so it was always easy to keep on reading late and night and agree with myself to stop for the night after ‘just one more’. And by the end I was left feeling exactly as Malachy intended, as if I had spent a very late night, listening to him tell these stories across a kitchen table. This was a great read and one I’d recommend to anyone wo is interested in Irish history.

I was really enjoying this book a few weeks ago, when I ran into an unusual hurdle. When I reached the second photo section and tried to continue reading on the other side, I lost all track of the story. Dick Tracy that I am, I quickly found the cause, the pages after the photo section picked up about 40 pages after where they had left off. Someone drinking on the job at the publishing house I suppose. Regardless, I was enjoying the read enough to get back to Borders and order up a replacement copy.

The premise of the book is an interesting one, as it all springs from a drunken bet. Tony Hawks (a British comic, not the skateboarder), told some friends at a party of having once seen a man hitchhiking in Ireland with a full size refrigerator. He got a skeptical reply, offered a drunken boast, and the next day woke up with a hangover and a signed note by which he had accepted a bet of 100 pounds that he could not hitchhike around the entire Emerald Isle with a fridge in tow. His route was flexible, with the only condition being that he visit a specific coastal island at the norther and southern ends of the country.

The book is a fun read. Tony comes off as a friendly and likable guy, the sort you’d enjoy having a few pints with in an Irish pub, quizzing him on exactly why it was he was traveling around Ireland with a fridge. And the locals welcomed him with generosity and admiration for his undertaking such a fine, pointless excursion.

We won’t be taking a fridge with us on our trip. But Tony’s travel tales were entertaining, and it’s hard not to respect someone who follows through on even their most outrageous drunken bets.

This wasn’t the first of my growing collection of Ireland related books that I started, but it was an easy first across the finish line. Part personal history, part Irish history, and part travelogue, Frank Gannon’s book Midlife Irish is a tremendously enjoyable read that I recommend to anyone interested in Ireland. Gannon was a 40-something, first-generation Irish American, who after both of his parents passed away set out to learn more about his own ‘Irishness’ and his parent’s seldom spoken about homeland.

This was really an ideal read for me, as I find myself in a similar place as Gannon did. My own Irish history is much more distant that his, I’m the fourth-generation since my Great Great Grandfather Michael Casey immigrated to Chicago from County Limerick, and happily my parents are still with us. But like Gannon I’m also recently curious about my family history, and planning my first trip to Ireland with hopes of exploring my ‘Irishness’ and touring a country that has intrigued me my whole life. The book offered many humorous insights into the Irish character, useful history that explains this unique character, and thoughtful reflection on family and personal history.

You don’t have to be Midlife Irish or even planning a trip to Ireland to enjoy this book. But if you are, it’s certainly a must read.

If you pay any attention to the ‘What I’m Reading’ block in the right column of my blog, then you can probably see a pattern among my current selections. Yes, they are all related to Ireland. I’m doing my homework in preparation for a planned trip there this spring. And so I’m looking for good books on the subject; histories, travel tales, guidebooks, and anything that my help me make the most of our coming visit. Suggestions are welcome, and I’ll write my reviews of each of them as I finish them.

OK, so I’ve been WAY behind on writing up anything about what I’m reading. This post has been sitting in my ‘drafts’ folder for months, where it began as a posting on summer reading. But with the New Year looming I need to clear the decks and admit that neither time nor memory will allow me to post any useful individual reviews on these books. So I’ll say only that I enjoyed and recommend each of them to any who may interested. Give one of them a try in 2007.

As you can tell from the ‘What I’m Reading’ block in the right column of my blog, I don’t read a lot of fiction. Most often my reading tastes tend towards history, biography, politics and current events. And so when recently home in California on vacation, despite having packed a few books, I was glad to accept a recommendation offered by each of my parents to read Orbit by John J. Nance.

The premise is that sometime in the near future, private space travel has continued to advance in the direction already started by SpaceShipOne in 2004. Kip Dawson, a pharmeceutical company executive in a troubled marriage and some issues with his son, thinks he’s scored a dream getaway when he wins a contest for a ride into orbit offered as a promotion gimmick by American Space Adventures. And so it begins. But shortly after arriving in space, a micrometeor pierces the ship, kills the pilot, and knocks out all communications. And Kip finds himself a castaway in Orbit, knowing that he will run out of air in five days.

No spoilers there, you can get that much from the book jacket. The book goes back and forth between Kip’s thoughts and actions as he deals with his looming demise and the scant hope of any happy ending for him. While back on Earth, the world follows his story with the fascination that is always paid to such human tragedies as babies who fall in wells, or miners trapped underground. It was a good read, a fast read, and an entertaining read. A good summer book, thanks for suggesting it Mom & Pop!

My brother sent me this book by T. Coraghessan Boyle, a fine author that he introduced me to years ago (Thanks Kevin!). The Inner Circle is a fictionalized account of the life, research and relationships of famed sex researcher, Alfred Kinsey. The story, told from the point of view of a former student who is hired by Kinsey to help conduct his research, provides a glimpse at what it must have been like to be a member of Kinsey’s staff, and a member of his ‘Inner Circle’.

The book led me to dig deeper. The movie Kinsey, starring Liam Neeson as Professor Kinsey, and the PBS American Experience documentary by the same name, were each good follow-ons to watch.

Despite its universal importance to the survival of our species, and the extra bonus that it’s also great fun, the taboos we wrap around ‘sex’ confront us daily. Some may be reasonable, and many are not. The Inner Circle was a good read, and a fascinating look at a man who tried to tear down some of these taboos, and the consequences that can accompany such efforts.

You’d really have to be asleep at the wheel these days to not be aware of fears about the eventual certainty of a major flu pandemic. Like the coming of ‘The Big One’ earthquake that will rock California, or the rumblings of a volcano we know is gonna blow… predictions of a coming Killer Flu are not offered as a question of ‘IF’, but a matter of ‘WHEN’. Just yesterday the White House issued an Implementation Plan for our National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza.

So watcha gonna do about it? I figured reading a book about the last big flu pandemic was as good an idea as any. When author John Barry undertook to write about the 1918 Flu pandemic, the avian virus H5N1 wasn’t yet news. The 1997 outbreak that year in Hong Kong killed six of eighteen infected people. In addition to the accidental timeliness of his topic, Barry also realized that to tell the story of 1918, he’d have to provide some history on the overall state of medicine in the United States in the years leading up to it. And the thing is, it was pretty atrocious. But thanks to the leadership of a handful of medical pioneers such as William Henry Welch and the institutions they founded such at the Johns Hopkins Medical School, medicine in America was quickly catching up with Europe.And there was some other pretty significant underlying history involved in the 1918 flu pandemic as well, and that was World War I. Young healthy men were being trained as soldiers, in crowded camps, and being sent to fight in the trenches of Europe. And their gathering and movement provider carriers to deliver the influenza virus across the country and around the world.

This is a scary story. Somewhere between 50 – 100 million people lost their lives to the 1918 flu outbreak. And uncharacteristically, it was the young and healthy who most frequently suffered a fatal outcome, dying as a result of their own body’s overwhelming response to the virus. People woke up feeling fine, and dropped dead within hours. Death was fast and prevalent, information was unavailable or misleading, fear ruled.

History repeats itself, again and again. It’s often horrible. You can ignore it, or learn from it. Time will tell which we’ve done.