Brando – The Fun Side by Aubrey Malone (Bear Manor Media, €32.95) Famously we are advised by Monty Python to look on the bright side of life. And so we ought to. But the bright side of Marlon Brando? He made his first impact as an actor playing a sullen angry young man in films that…
Irish Doctors in the Second World War by PJ Casey, KT Cullen, and JP Duignan (Merrion Press, €29.99/£25.99) This is a comprehensive account of the Irish doctors who served with the Allied forces in World War II. This is for all intents and purposes an untold story, but one that needed to be told for…
A Summer with Pascal Antoine Compagnon, translated by Catherine Porte (The Belknap Press / Harvard University Press, £19.95 / €23.60) Pensées by Blaise Pascal, translation edited by Pierre Zoberman with an introduction by David Wetsel, with notes by both (Catholic University of America Press, £29.99 / €35.50 Pope Francis published an Apostolic Letter in June 2023…
Dublin from 1970 to 1990: The city transformed by Joseph Brady (Four Court Press, review of Joe Brady, €24.95 / £18.50) This new book by Joseph Brady marks the conclusion of a series devoted to the development of Dublin city, or perhaps we might say the Dublin region, since circa 900 AD, Joseph Brady is a…
The History of the Church of Christ by Pierre Daniel-Rops (Cluny Media, in ten volumes, priced from $US 27.95/€25.50) Back in the post-war decades in Ireland, for many Catholics two authors stood out. One was the Jesuit Fr Frederick Copleston with his volumes of A History of Philosophy, which was perhaps a little too academic for…
Democracy and solidarity: On the cultural roots of America’s political crisis James Davison Hunter (Yale University Press, £30.00 / €36..00 / US$40.00 ) Some years ago, three married couples from Texas, USA, contacted us. They were touring Ireland in pursuit of their ancestors. They thought that we might be a branch of one of their family’s…
“You Will Dye at Midnight”: Threatening Letters in Victorian Ireland by Donal P. McCracken (Eastwood, €20.00) The news media these days are filled with reports of threats of death and violence being made, not just against celebrities, politicians, media stars, bishops, and such like, but against even internet users careless enough to expose themselves to comment…
A Life in Medicine, from Asclepius to Beckett by Eoin O’Brien, foreword by John Banville (Lilliput Press, €25.00 / £21.00) Irish literature is filled with examples of leading medical men, who were also creative and bold litterateurs. One thinks of Sir William Wilde, Oliver St John Gogarty, J. B. Lyons and many others. As a medical…
Synodality and the Recovery of Vatican II: A new way for Catholics edited by Stephen J. McKinney, Thomas O’Loughlin & Beáta Tóth (Messenger Publications, €25.00) As the title suggests this is a book with a studied purpose, but whose intentions have been caught up with by the passage of events in a way the editors could not have expected.…
The Golden Thread: The Life and Gifts of Miss Frances Ellis by Patrick Heren (Gracewing, £20.00 / €25.00) The past it was once said is a foreign country: they do things differently there. And so they do as this interesting book about a major benefactor reveals. This is an exploration of a Catholic world Irish readers…
Peter Costello