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- We don't know ourselves : a personal history of modern Ireland / by O'Toole, Fintan,1958-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A celebrated Irish writer's magisterial, brilliantly insightful chronicle of the wrenching transformations that dragged his homeland into the modern world. Fintan O'Toole was born in the year the revolution began. It was 1958, and the Irish government?in despair, because all the young people were leaving?opened the country to foreign investment and popular culture. So began a decades-long, ongoing experiment with Irish national identity. In We Don't Know Ourselves, O'Toole, one of the Anglophone world's most consummate stylists, weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary "backwater" to an almost totally open society-perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history. Born to a working-class family in the Dublin suburbs, O'Toole served as an altar boy and attended a Christian Brothers school, much as his forebears did. He was enthralled by American Westerns suddenly appearing on Irish television, which were not that far from his own experience, given that Ireland's main export was beef and it was still not unknown for herds of cattle to clatter down Dublin's streets. Yet the Westerns were a sign of what was to come. O'Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish, women in particular. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism. In O'Toole's telling, America became a lodestar, from John F. Kennedy's 1963 visit, when the soon-to-be martyred American president was welcomed as a native son, to the emergence of the Irish technology sector in the late 1990s, driven by American corporations, which set Ireland on the path toward particular disaster during the 2008 financial crisis. A remarkably compassionate yet exacting observer, O'Toole in coruscating prose captures the peculiar Irish habit of "deliberate unknowing," which allowed myths of national greatness to persist even as the foundations were crumbling. Forty years in the making, We Don't Know Ourselves is a landmark work, a memoir and a national history that ultimately reveals how the two modes are entwined for all of us"--- Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; O'Toole, Fintan, 1958-;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- Normal women : 900 years of making history / by Gregory, Philippa,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.Did you know that there are more penises than women in the Bayeux Tapestry? That the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 was started and propelled by women who were protesting a tax on women? Or that celebrated naturalist Charles Darwin believed not just that women were inferior to men, but that they'd evolve to become ever more inferior? These are just a few of the startling findings you will learn from reading Philippa Gregory's "Normal Women". In this ambitious and groundbreaking book, she tells the story of England over nine hundred years, for the very first time placing women-some 50 percent of the population-center stage. Using research skills honed in her work as one of our foremost historical novelists, Gregory trawled through court records, newspapers, and journals to find highwaywomen and beggars, murderers and brides, housewives and pirates, female husbands and hermits. The "normal women" you will meet in these pages went to war, ploughed fields, campaigned, wrote, and loved. They rode in jousts, flew Spitfires, issued their own currency, and built ships, corn mills, and houses. They committed crimes, worshipped many gods, cooked and nursed, invented things, and rioted. A lot. A landmark of scholarship and storytelling, "Normal Women" chronicles centuries of social and cultural change-from 1066 to modern times-powered by the determination, persistence, and effectiveness of women.- Subjects: Women;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- Walking the bowl : a true story of murder and survival among the street children of Lusaka / by Lockhart, Chris,1967-author.; Chama, Daniel Mulilo,author.;
Includes bibliographical references.For readers of Behind the Beautiful Forevers and Nothing to Envy, this is a breathtaking real-life story of four street children in contemporary Zambia whose lives are drawn together and forever altered by the mysterious murder of a fellow street child. Based on years of investigative reporting and unprecedented fieldwork, Walking the Bowl immerses readers in the daily lives of four unforgettable characters: Lusabilo, a determined waste picker; Kapula, a burned-out brothel worker; Moonga, a former rock crusher turned beggar; and Timo, an ambitious gang leader. These children navigate the violent and poverty-stricken underworld of Lusaka, one of Africa's fastest growing cities. When the dead body of a ten-year-old boy is discovered under a heap of garbage in Lusaka's largest landfill, a murder investigation quickly heats up due to the influence of the victim's mother and her far-reaching political connections. The children's lives become more closely intertwined as each child engages in a desperate bid for survival against forces they could never have imagined. Gripping and fast-paced, the book exposes the perilous aspects of street life through the eyes of the children who survive, endure and dream there, and what emerges is an ultimately hopeful story about human kindness and how one small good deed, passed on to others, can make a difference in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.- Subjects: Biographies.; True crime stories.; Personal narratives.; Murder; Street children;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- The last Mrs. Summers / by Bowen, Rhys,author.;
"Lady Georgiana Rannoch is just back from her honeymoon with dashing Darcy O'Mara when a friend in need pulls her into a twisted Gothic tale of betrayal, deception and, most definitely, murder ... I am a bit at loose ends at the moment. My cook, Queenie, is making my new role as mistress of Eynsleigh something akin to constant torture as Darcy is off on another one of his top secret jaunts. And Grandad is busy helping wayward youths avoid lives of crime. So when my dearest friend, Belinda, inherits an old cottage in Cornwall and begs me to go with her to inspect the property, I jump at the chance. After a heart-stopping journey in Belinda's beast of a motorcar, we arrive at the creaky old cottage called White Sails and quickly realize that it is completely uninhabitable. Just when I'm starting to wonder if I would have been better off trying to get Queenie to cook a roast that hasn't been burnt beyond all recognition, we meet Rose Summers, a woman Belinda knew as a child when she spent time in Cornwall. Rose invites us to stay at Trewoma Hall, the lovely estate now owned by her husband, Tony. Belinda confesses that she never liked Rose and had a fling with Tony years ago, so staying with them is far from ideal but beggars can't be choosers as they say. Trewoma is not the idyllic house Belinda remembers. There's something claustrophobic and foreboding about the place. Matters aren't helped by the oppressively efficient housekeeper Mrs. Mannering or by the fact that Tony seems to want to rekindle whatever he and Belinda once had right under his wife's nose. Our increasingly awkward visit soon turns deadly when a member of the household is found murdered and all clues point to Belinda as the prime suspect. I soon learn that some long buried secrets have come back to haunt those in residence at Trewoma Hall and I'll need to sift through the ruins of their past so Belinda doesn't lose her chance at freedom in the present ... "--- Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Historical fiction.; Aristocracy (Social class); Household employees; Murder; Newlyweds; Rannoch, Georgie (Fictitious character); Secrecy;
- Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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- This country is no longer yours : a novel / by Jain Chatlani, Avik,author.;
"In Avik Jain Chatlani's This Country Is No Longer Yours, a chorus of disparate voices comes together to explore how idealists and opportunists betray ordinary people in war-torn Peru. One of our dead writers liked to say, "Peru is a beggar sleeping on a bench made of gold." It's a cute phrase, but it's not really true. There's hardly any gold left, and none of us get much sleep. Based on real events in 1970s-2000s Peru, This Country Is No Longer Yours tells the story of people living through the terrorist campaign of the Maoist Shining Path, while struggling to survive amid economic crisis and state collapse. A student of the revolution's leader is dispatched to Cambodia to learn from the Khmer Rouge, sending him spiralling into a world of unfathomable political violence that both inspires him and will be his undoing. Then, as the terror spreads across Peru, a ruthless security agent of the newly-elected neoconservative government works to squash the growing insurgency now threatening the halls of power, while applying his surveillance training to romantic pursuits--with chilling results. When the war is over, a journalist committed to exposing a brewing nationalist counter-revolution is too preoccupied to help a reader desperately pleading for help outing a sexual predator, who is seeking the presidency. And, in the country that remains, two former guerrillas meet again, one now a teacher stuck in the past, the other living on the margins and still fighting for her future. Depicting a place and time ravaged by terror but alive with new ambitions and enduring love, Jain Chatlani explores the intersection of political breakdown and human endurance, as well as the unbearable choices demanded of those living in a society at war with itself. With incisive and haunting prose, combined with deeply personal insight, Jain Chatlani offers a stinging indictment of the ideologies that brutalize the very people they claim to represent, and relays an urgent warning about the dangers of zealotry, political messianism and acts of violence justified in the name of a cause."--- Subjects: Political fiction.; Novels.; Sendero Luminoso (Guerrilla group); Journalists; Violence;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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