Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This is a book about Ireland and the Irish. Although not history, it will cover the past extensively, although not politics it will cover north and south, the troubles and their background. There will be much about the people, their defining national character and personality, the relationship to Europe, Britain and the US and although not literary criticism, there will be a lot about the arts and literature of the country.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

The author, among other works, of France Today (Penguin, 1988) and Germany and the Germans (Harper, 1987), Ardagh is particularly adroit at drawing cultural portraits of European countries. Ardagh's ability to tell readers enough about his subject to inform them, without a great deal of theoretical or historical background, remains his greatest strength. Turning his hand to contemporary Ireland, he once again has produced a worthwhile book, although not quite of the same depth as the France and Germany titles. His theme is the movement of Ireland from self-encapsulation to European identity, from provincialism to a modern pluralist and somewhat secularized society. Ardagh draws on interviews, stories, and description to highlight the improved condition of the economy, the state of agriculture, the problems of urban sprawl in Dublin, the (slowly) changing status of women, and the struggle of the Church to grapple with a changing Irish society. While Ardagh has grasped the central issues and problems of this unique island, it must be stated that his book, however well crafted, remains a snapshot of Ireland and that one must turn to other works for a more probing analysis. Highly recommended for the general reader.‘Richard B. Finnegan, Stonehill Coll., North Easton, Mass. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

``The Irish are keen to be part of Europe, but their gaze is mainly at themselves. They know what they think, and they don't want to be confused by the facts.'' With that statement, the author takes the reader on a wonderful trip around the Ireland of today, which‘with the help of the EEC and TV‘has finally burst into the 20th century with an eagerness and an aggressiveness that are tempered by old-time moral values. Ardagh looks at Ireland and change in Ireland through its politicians: the autarchic and myopic Eamon de Valera, the visionary Sean Lemass, the rogue Charlie Haughey and chic President Mary Robinson. He sees a young country (44% of the population is under 25) that attempts to coax the high-tech corporations of Japan, Germany and the U.S. to its shores but still treasures its own music, culture and language. Ireland, according to the author, is the ``Pope's last bastion,'' where 82% of the population attend Sunday mass. But Ireland's Catholics no longer blindly obey Rome's rulings: Birth control is in and the issue of divorce still pending. It is a nation divided politically, slowly coming together, where the most eager students of the Irish language are Northern Protestants. Ardagh (France Today) has written an eye-opening, comprehensive and delightful book. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

The government of the Republic of Ireland aspires to a "modernized" economy fully integrated with the European Union; yet the government's official policy is to replace English with a near-extinct language as the mode of daily communication. The Catholic bishops maintain their traditional attitudes regarding the role of women; yet the political and economic power of women in Irish society is growing rapidly. Ardagh has previously written on the social and cultural milieus of France and Germany. In his efforts to cover all bases in a panoramic study of Ireland, Ardagh's analyses may sometimes run a mile wide and an inch deep. Nevertheless, the general reader should find this work to be both informative and enjoyable. Ardagh is a gifted writer with a lucid style and a perceptive grasp of the ironies inherent in a nation seeking to transform itself while striving to hold onto (or to reconstruct) a treasured past. His chapters on the Irish diaspora and the surprisingly vibrant efforts to revive the Gaelic language are particularly enlightening. At a minimum, Ardagh will whet the appetite of any readers who choose to pursue some of these topics in greater depth. --Jay Freeman

Kirkus Book Review

A book on Ireland and the Irish that is conscientious, earnest, and, unlike its subject, a little dull. Ardagh (Germany and the Germans, 1987), a part of the great Irish diaspora, spent a good deal of time in Ireland between 1991 and 1993, traveling everywhere and meeting many prominent Irish men and women, some of whose comments form the most vivid parts of the book. In many ways Ireland, Ardagh suggests, is an even more curious place than its sometimes fey reputation would indicate. It is not only one of the poorest countries in Europe, but one of the most over-taxed and over-centralized, with the highest unemployment of any industrialized country. Its greatest talents have almost always gone abroad (Wilde, Shaw, Joyce, Beckett, and their contemporaries). While its life ``is still lived with a particular gregarious intensity that seems more Mediterranean than northern,'' it is, says Ardagh, a more inhibited and controlled society than almost any other contemporary European country. And only now is it beginning to undergo a degree of emancipation, leading to the immortal words of one member of Parliament that ``there was no sex in Ireland until the BBC came.'' Ardagh is best on the north, which he had expected to find, paraphrasing Thomas Hobbes, ``nasty, British and short,'' but where he instead found the people to be ``marvelous, second to none.'' ``The Northern Irish may not be comprehensible,'' he quotes one source as saying, ``but they are very addictive,'' and his view even of the militant Protestant leader Reverend Ian Paisley--``an astute, gifted man of some stature, charismatic in his way''--is fair and thoughtful. A solid effort; though left to his own devices and deprived of the sometimes stimulating company he kept, Ardagh himself is rather pedestrian.