Impeachment: a citizen’s guide by Cass R. Sunstein (Harvard University Press, €7) Felix M. Larkin With speculation rife about the possibility of impeaching President Trump, this little book is indeed timely. In it, Prof. Sunstein outlines what he calls “the majesty and the mystery of impeachment in the US Constitution” – and he dispels much misunderstanding of…
Pat O’Kelly In September 2016 the National Concert Hall, RTÉ and Bord na Móna devised a celebration of music spanning the previous century. Entitled Composing the Island, it was a bold endeavour but, maybe at the end of its three-week run, one had become somewhat saturated and I remember suffering, what I call, musical…
With RTÉ’s Leap of Faith gone into sleep mode for the summer, you wouldn’t go far wrong checking out Sunday Sequence (BBC Radio Ulster) for some stimulating religious and ethical discussion with an Irish flavour. Last Sunday morning it felt like something of a time warp with issues like land grabbing, slavery, and whether children…
World of Books by the Books Editor I was struck the other day, while reading Anthony Dent’s book Lost Beasts of Britain, by a remark in his preface. He is explaining that he deals largely with the extent of Britain known to the “good emperor” Antoninus Pius, builder of the Antonine Wall in 142 AD,…
Religion vs. Science: What Religious People Really Think by Elaine Howard Ecklund and Christopher P. Scheitle (Oxford University Press, £19.99) Christopher Moriarty Scientists are subversive. Good scientists are supposed to question everything within their sphere. Institutional religion on the other hand demands obedience to the authoritative word and forbids questioning. The title of this book, by…
The Adoption Machine by Paul Jude Redmond – foreword by Clare Daly TD – (Merrion Press, €16.99). Finola Kennedy The sub-title of The Adoption Machine is ‘The Dark History of Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes and the inside story of how Tuam 800 became a global scandal’. The book also contains the author’s personal history.…
I Feel Pretty (12A) Namechecking the endearing Natalie Wood tune from West Side Story in its title, this comes to us with the oldest message in movies: it’s the inner person that counts in matters of the heart rather than the outer one. Renee Bennett (Amy Schumer) is a kooky IT worker who’s a bit on the…
Lincoln and the Irish: The Untold Story of How the Irish Helped Abraham Lincoln Save the Union by Niall O’Dowd (Skyhorse Publishing, €20.67/$24.99) Peter Hegarty Niall O’Dowd has an original take on the American Civil War: without the 150,000 Irish soldiers who served in the his armies, Lincoln’s Union would have lost. The Irish-American publisher emphasises…
Perhaps few things provoke Irish eye-rolling quite so much as the clichéd tendency of our cousins across the Irish Sea to claim Irish sporting and acting successes as ‘British’, but it was especially bizarre to read last week a catholicherald.co.uk piece claiming Oscar Wilde’s deathbed conversion as an English phenomenon. In ‘The Passion of Oscar…
Many political shows get phased out over the summer, presumably because the Dáil is not sitting but I don’t get the logic of a religious affairs show ending in April. Last Friday’s Leap of Faith (RTÉ Radio 1) was unfortunately the last in the current series, but it will be back in the Autumn. The…
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Greg Daly