My Ireland

Download or read book My Father Left Me Ireland written by Michael Brendan Dougherty and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The perfect gift for parents this Father’s Day: a beautiful, gut-wrenching memoir of Irish identity, fatherhood, and what we owe to the past. “A heartbreaking and redemptive book, written with courage and grace.” –J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy “…a lovely little book.” –Ross Douthat, The New York Times The child of an Irish man and an Irish-American woman who split up before he was born, Michael Brendan Dougherty grew up with an acute sense of absence. He was raised in New Jersey by his hard-working single mother, who gave him a passion for Ireland, the land of her roots and the home of Michael's father. She put him to bed using little phrases in the Irish language, sang traditional songs, and filled their home with a romantic vision of a homeland over the horizon. Every few years, his father returned from Dublin for a visit, but those encounters were never long enough. Devastated by his father's departures, Michael eventually consoled himself by believing that fatherhood was best understood as a check in the mail. Wearied by the Irish kitsch of the 1990s, he began to reject his mother's Irish nationalism as a romantic myth. Years later, when Michael found out that he would soon be a father himself, he could no longer afford to be jaded; he would need to tell his daughter who she is and where she comes from. He immediately re-immersed himself in the biographies of firebrands like Patrick Pearse and studied the Irish language. And he decided to reconnect with the man who had left him behind, and the nation just over the horizon. He began writing letters to his father about what he remembered, missed, and longed for. Those letters would become this book. Along the way, Michael realized that his longings were shared by many Americans of every ethnicity and background. So many of us these days lack a clear sense of our cultural origins or even a vocabulary for expressing this lack--so we avoid talking about our roots altogether. As a result, the traditional sense of pride has started to feel foreign and dangerous; we've become great consumers of cultural kitsch, but useless conservators of our true history. In these deeply felt and fascinating letters, Dougherty goes beyond his family's story to share a fascinating meditation on the meaning of identity in America.

Download or read book My Ireland My England written by Paddy McGarvey and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2012-11 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1948, an ambitious 20 year-old Irish journalist with law and law-reporting experience, arrived in Shrewsbury at 9.15 a.m to join a national press agency, tired and hungry after the night boat from Dublin, two trains, and a six hour wait at Crewe Junction. His new boss shook hands in the office at Shoplatch and sent him back up the town to a divorce court. He bought himself a Mars bar for breakfast. After an hour of taking down the most lubricious evidence he had ever heard, about women's underwear draped over a chair, a man in her bed and his shoes under it, the court rose, the clerk sent the bailiff out for a policeman who took him downstairs to a cell. the constable shut the door. the clerk arrived and offered the prisoner a cigarette, declined. He took off his wig and sat down beside him to ask who he was, who he worked for, where did he come from, and when? the reporter replied - Paddy McGarvey, Bryce Thomas Press Agency in Shoplatch, from Dublin, this morning, and the clerk roared with laughter "You are not allowed to write down evidence in divorce; it is illegal. You should have been told that by your editor. You must wait to hear the judge's summary and decision, to report that if you wish." Resuming his wig, he told the police there would be no charge, and to release him. the clerk told the resumed court he comes only this very this morning from a country which forbids divorce, and the court roared with laughter. His meekly polite employer, Leslie Bryce Thomas, arrived and took him back to the office, on this, his first morning, job, court, day, police cell, in England.

Download or read book My Ireland written by Edward John Moreton Dunsany and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This vintage volume contains Lord Dunsany's 1937 novel, "My Ireland". Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett (1878 - 1957) was an Irish writer and dramatist, most famous for the novels, mostly in the fantasy genre, that he published under the pen name 'Lord Dunsany'. A prolific writer, he published more than eighty books and many hundreds of short stories, as well as numerous plays, novels, and essays. The chapters of this book include: 'A. E., Tara', 'St. Patrick', 'Old Mickey', 'Francis Ledwidge', 'How the Students came to Trim', 'A Lapse of Memory', 'Jack-Snipe', 'Woodcock', 'Gray Lags', 'Business', 'John Watson', 'The State of the Moon', 'Swans', etcetera. Many antiquarian books like this are increasingly scarce and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, high-quality, modern edition. It comes complete with a specially commissioned biography of the author.

Download or read book Doing My Bit for Ireland written by Margaret Skinnider and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Margaret Skinnider (circa 1893-1971) was born in Scotland to Irish parents. She trained as a teacher and taught mathematics in Glasgow, Scotland, before resigning her position to go to Dublin to take part in the Easter Rising of April 1916. Skinnider's Doing My Bit for Ireland, published in the United States in 1917, is her account of her revolutionary activities in 1915 and 1916. She begins by telling the story of her first trip to Dublin, in 1915, when she smuggled detonators for bombs into Ireland for use by the nationalists. This is followed by a more extensive narrative of her role in the Easter Rising. Skinnider carried ammunition, served as a dispatch rider, and was a sniper. After spending seven weeks in the hospital recovering from three gunshot wounds suffered in the uprising, she managed to avoid arrest and to make her way back to Glasgow. During a brief return to Ireland in August 1916, she was trailed by a detective and fled to the United States, where in 1917-18 she campaigned for the cause of Irish independence. The book is illustrated and contains, in addition to Skinnider's narrative, facsimile copies of important documents relating to the events of April 1916, including the proclamation of an Irish republic by the provisional government, stamps issued by the republic during its brief existence, the last proclamation issued by Padraic Pearse, president of the republic, and Pearse's surrender document of April 29, 1916. The book concludes with the lyrics to the songs sung by Irish volunteers before and after the Easter Rising. After her stay in the United States, Skinnider returned to Ireland and was active in the Cummann na mBan, the women's auxiliary to the Irish Republican Army.

Download or read book To Be a Machine written by Mark O'Connell and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This gonzo-journalistic exploration of the Silicon Valley techno-utopians’ pursuit of escaping mortality is a breezy romp full of colorful characters.” —New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice) Transhumanism is a movement pushing the limits of our bodies—our capabilities, intelligence, and lifespans—in the hopes that, through technology, we can become something better than ourselves. It has found support among Silicon Valley billionaires and some of the world’s biggest businesses. In To Be a Machine, journalist Mark O'Connell explores the staggering possibilities and moral quandaries that present themselves when you of think of your body as a device. He visits the world's foremost cryonics facility to witness how some have chosen to forestall death. He discovers an underground collective of biohackers, implanting electronics under their skin to enhance their senses. He meets a team of scientists urgently investigating how to protect mankind from artificial superintelligence. Where is our obsession with technology leading us? What does the rise of AI mean not just for our offices and homes, but for our humanity? Could the technologies we create to help us eventually bring us to harm? Addressing these questions, O'Connell presents a profound, provocative, often laugh-out-loud-funny look at an influential movement. In investigating what it means to be a machine, he offers a surprising meditation on what it means to be human.

Download or read book Ireland Standing Firm written by Robert Brennan and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two memoirs written in the late 1950s by Robert Brennan, a republican activist in the early years of the twentieth century, journalist and close associate of Eamon de Valera. "Ireland Standing Firm" is a frank and pungent account of Robert Brennan's time as Irish Minister (in effect Irish Ambassador) in Washington immediately before and during the World War II. Brennan provides an account of his efforts in defending Irish neutrality and his meetings with leading American officials and politicians, including Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the second memoir, Brennan describes his close association with Eamon de Valera from their first meeting in prison in 1917 until de Valera's retirement as Taoiseach in 1959.

Download or read book Doing My Bit For Ireland written by Margaret Skinnider and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2021-05-19 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This invaluable work presents the general reflected thoughts of one of the influential female participants in the 1916 Easter Rising and describes her part as one of the few female warriors. The book gives an accurate first-hand account, written not long after the Rising in a comprehensible manner.