Books – Page 12 – Slugger O'Toole

Lessons in Cute Hoorism: “Graft was accepted, for you were taking from the British…”

Mick Fealty on May 3, 2011, 10:24 am

| Readers 18

I’ve been catching up on some reading, recently. Most pleasantly surprised by John Drennan’s latest opus from Gill and Macmillan, Cute Hoors and Pious Protestors… It’s early days yet, but I was struck by this paragraph, part of a dissection of Fianna Fail near the beginning: One of the more fatal consequences of our colonial experience was the warping of Irish political development. Since the rise of O’Connell Irish politics has been clominated by the big tent school of politics, …

…if University education were universally available and availed of, the country would collapse in one generation

John Ó Néill on March 31, 2011, 11:17 am

| Readers 137

The words of Brian O’Nolan, variously Brian Ó Nualláin, Myles na gCopaleen, Myles na Gopaleen and, of course, Flann O’Brien. That O’Nolan was referencing his own dissolute student days at UCD only mildly distracts from the prophetic undertone of his words: I paid no attention whatsoever to books or study and regarded lectures as a joke which, in fact, they were if you discern anything funny in mawkish, obtuse mumblings on subjects any intelligent person could master single-handed in a …

Stay out of Libya: counterinsurgency doesn’t work

Brian Walker on March 3, 2011, 12:32 am

| Readers 12

A moment of some significance in journalism perhaps, as the New York Times reviews the current talked about book, The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan by Bing West. The author is no bleeding heart but a former assistant Defense Secretary from the Reagan era who stomped his way round the Afghan battlefield to research it. With remorseless lucidity, he exposes the good intentions and practical shortcomings of today’s counterinsurgency doctrine. It brings to mind that critique of …

Is Fianna Fail the new Woolworths of Irish politics?

Mick Fealty on February 17, 2011, 10:01 am

| Readers 52

It’s not published until 3rd March, but one book I recommend you place an advance order for from Slugger’s Bookstore is James Harkin’s Niche. Belfast émigré Harkin examines a number of stories from business, culture and politics and comes to a single insight: everywhere the broad middle is collapsing. He offers Woolworths as an iconic exemplar of how a broadly curated High Street offering failed when customers chose instead to draw from a range of highly segmented retail outlets: The big …

The peace process not such a good model after all

Brian Walker on January 13, 2011, 12:01 am

| Readers 11

Which reminds me…. Platform for Change’s driving force Robin Wilson has produced a corrective to the notion that the lessons of the NI conflict are easily exportable. Like myself, Robin is associated with the Constitution Unit. He introduced his new book in a CU blog which I here reproduce. The water crisis in Northern Ireland before Christmas, which saw queues of citizens plaintively bringing plastic containers to standpipes, presented the region to the world’s media as akin to a third-world …

Ulsters Last Stand?: Can Unionism Move Beyond Insurance Policy Politics?

Gladys Ganiel on January 4, 2011, 11:21 pm

| Readers 37

How has Ulster unionism arrived at where it is today – fractured and uncertain, yet dominated electorally by the DUP, a party that tells us it offers unionists sure footing in uncertain times? In his latest book, Ulster’s Last Stand? Reconstructing Unionism after the Peace Process (Irish Academic Press, 2010), Prof. James McAuley from the University of Huddersfield tackles that question. McAuley claims that the hegemony of the DUP depends in large part on the party’s ability to talk about …

Help me with the West Wing: Essential viewing or Party Political Broadcast?

ItwasSammyMcNally on January 3, 2011, 10:48 am

| Readers 86

Having somehow managed to avoid watching a single episode of the widely praised West Wing TV series I was delighted to discover the entire Box set in my Christmas stocking – and with enough spare time over the holidays to give it a good lash. But with 10 episodes of the first series under my belt, my initial burst of viewing enthusiasm is on the wane. There seems, to be a distinct lack of edge to the plots, a fairly …

Have we Learned our own Lessons? Book Review of John Brewer’s Peace Processes

Gladys Ganiel on December 20, 2010, 3:17 pm

| Readers 63

Northern Ireland’s peace process has been promoted as an international success story. The Republic’s Department of Foreign Affairs has its Conflict Resolution Unit, which aims to disseminate the ‘lessons’ of the Northern Ireland peace process. And some of the prominent players in our peace process have travelled abroad to other troubled spots to share their experiences. Despite its setbacks and maddeningly slow pace, our peace process has delivered a peace of sorts and from an international comparative perspective it is …

Ian O’Riordan’s Miles to Run: An invitation to madness?

Gladys Ganiel on December 19, 2010, 4:35 pm

| Readers 254

Ireland is in the middle of a boom – a running boom. Chances are, even if you have never run a step yourself (apart from some painful P.E. classes many moons ago), someone you know has taken up running over the last little while. Road races in Northern Ireland and in the Republic have seen record-breaking numbers of participants this year, as they did the year before and the year before that. A new book by the athletics correspondent for …

John Laird for Christmas?

Brian Walker on December 17, 2010, 12:45 pm

| Readers 158

John Laird (Lord Laird of Artigarvan) is unionism’s jester. His memoir A Struggle To Be Heard ” by a True Ulster Liberal” (from Slugger’s shop on Amazon here) might serve more as a heavy stocking filler than anybody’s idea of a main present. In it he wears the masks of comedy and tragedy to turn the stereotype of unionism on its head, as his title implies, dressed in his huge kilt on the front of the book and a grenadier’s uniform …

The lost art of reading (or drowning in too much information)…

Mick Fealty on December 13, 2010, 4:39 pm

| Readers 10

Here’s a great review of a fascinating book (H/T reader Rory) on how the Internet is destroying our capacity for intelligent, focused and critical thought. It opens thus: …here is the news that Ulin brings in this slim, meandering book: that reading is “an act of contemplation”; that such an act becomes more difficult in “our overnetworked society, where every buzz and rumor is instantly blogged and tweeted, and it is not contemplation we desire but an odd sort of …

Hearing the Other Voice from the Grave: Why Should we Listen to David Ervine’s Stories?

Gladys Ganiel on November 29, 2010, 10:44 am

| Readers 502

Ed Moloney’s Voices from the Grave: Two Men’s War in Ireland has received considerable attention in the press and in the public realm since its publication earlier this year. Although the book relates the experiences of the Provisional IRA’s Brendan Hughes and the PUP/UVF’s David Ervine, much of the discussion has focused on Hughes’ stories about Gerry Adams. This book review will not delve into the Adams-related stories in detail, as I think they have by now entered our common …

Belfast port celebrated as hopes rise for lower corporation tax

Brian Walker on November 9, 2010, 9:57 pm

| Readers 26

The House of Lords was the suitably grand venue for the London launch of Alf McCreary’s magnificently illustrated tome Titanic Port, a history of Belfast Harbour. Before I got a chance to take a good look at my copy, my ears pricked up when the chairman of the harbour commissioners Len O’Hagan said hopes were high that Northern Ireland would “soon be allowed to set its own rate of corporation tax”. Sitting nearby was the Secretary of State Owen Paterson who …

O’Toole’s New Republic – unfinished business or just a dream?

Brian Walker on November 1, 2010, 8:04 pm

| Readers 38

More as a trailer than a review – as it’s out on Thursday– I draw attention to Fintan O’Toole’s latest polemic “Enough is Enough – how to build a new Republic“. Fintan has been promoting the book vigorously on this side of the water, on Radio 4’s Start the Week and here at greater length in an interview on Radio 3’s Night Waves (first interview)). A pity he didn’t link both parts of Ireland in his modernisation project. Note his …

Eamon Nancarrow’s misadventures in Rock…

Mick Fealty on October 29, 2010, 5:58 pm

| Readers 104

It’s the quiet ones you have to watch, they say. When I last saw Eamonn Namcarrow, back in the mid 1980s he was a congenial, good-natured and highly sociable young lad. The next time was 26 years later, in Lavery’s Gin Palace in Bradbury Place. He’d just brought out his first book, Holywood Star about his misadventures on the way to rock and roll oblivion. In fact half of Holywood have been reading it, it seems: or at least that …

Voices from the Grave

Rusty Nail on October 24, 2010, 7:02 pm

| Readers 202

Coming up to the Halloween holiday, some people might be frightened of the idea of Voices from the Grave – but for others, the chance to hear an oral history of the Troubles from the mouths of two (in)famous protagonists, PUP leader and former UVF member David Ervine, and Brendan “The Dark” Hughes, is not to be missed. It had been said of one of the men, former IRA OC and hunger striker Brendan Hughes, that he was ‘not right …

Books: Listening to Van Morrison…

Mick Fealty on September 14, 2010, 9:27 pm

| Readers 17

Great little review of Listening to Van Morrison by Griel Marcus… It’s a short book, not a biography or a career survey, but an attempt to follow those moments in Morrison’s music, as he’s made it from his first records with Them, from Belfast in 1965 to the present day, when something happens that breaks through the boundaries of ordinary communication, of ordinary art speech. In this book those moments are called “the yarragh,” a term that comes from the …

Propaganda of Peace: Media and culture during the peace process

Mick Fealty on September 10, 2010, 2:24 pm

| Readers 160

Extract from Greg McLaughlin and Stephen Baker: The Propaganda of Peace: The Role of Media and Culture in the Northern Ireland Peace Process. Bristol: Intellect Books. 2010. Political opponents Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness were confirmed as First Minister and Deputy First Minister of a new executive in May 2007, closing yet another chapter in Northern Ireland’s troubled history. A dramatic realignment of politics had brought these irreconcilable enemies together and the media played a significant role in persuading the …

Talking to a brick wall: how to make politicians listen?

Paschal Donohoe on September 7, 2010, 3:20 pm

| Readers 41

It took me a long time to warm to advertising agencies. The first time I worked with one I was working in sales management on Fairy Washing Up Liquid. I was due to attend a meeting at which I was to be told what consumers really thought of the brand. I remember my reluctance to attend. Surely, I reasoned, we already knew the answer to this question as millions of consumers picked up the dark green bottles off the shelf …

Total Politics: Top 20 NI Blogs…

Mick Fealty on September 1, 2010, 9:01 am

| Readers 39

Fair play to Iain, he managed to get over 2,200 people voting in his poll for the top Northern Irish blogs this year… We (just, I imagine) retained our top spot, with Splintered coming straight in at number 2, no doubt his pet subject du jour will have garnered him a lot of fans… I’ve given him a bit of mention in my review of the Irish blogosphere for 2010, which for now you’ll have to buy the book to …