Irish Non-Fiction

Peatlands – bogs, fens and heaths – are part of the Irish soul. Neither water nor land and yet both, they were once considered gateways to the otherworld. Bleak and beautiful, they are time capsules that hold a record of history g…

On frosty nights, as he sits by a flickering fire, Michael Harding withdraws into the stillness of winter and begins to reckon with age and death.As stories emerge from the shadows, we meet a young boy whose arrival brings hope, b…

This is a revised and enlarged edition of John Moriarty’s first published work, which has been out of print since 1994. A Book of Revelations mediated by stories and personal excursions in literature, philosophy and sacred writing…

Foreword by Dáithí Ó Sé Step back into a world where turf fires warmed the hearth, water was drawn from the well, and stories told by flickering candlelight lit up the night. In Old Ways to New Days, folklorist Shane Lehane brings…

What if the answers to our housing crisis weren’t locked in government policy or developer margins —but already being built, quietly, by communities across the world? In Our Homes, eco-builder and broadcaster Harrison Gardner expl…

Featuring 100 captivating portraits of many of Ireland’s greatest contemporary writers, alongside conversations with each on their writing life, Scribendi is a landmark book of portraits of Irish writers by internationally renowne…

Discover the gods, goddesses, heroes, and monsters from Celtic mythology with this beautiful book that captures the ancient stories and tales that captivated the Celts. Prepare to be entertained as you learn about the many myths a…

The story of the grassroots #WakingTheFeminists movement in Irish theater, a campaign that changed how we saw the world and reshaped the future both on and off the stage. When the Abbey Theatre's 2016 centenary program excluded wo…

You could say that Frank McNally is a travel writer – he writes while the world travels by! For almost twenty years, Frank’s name has occupied the byline of the ever-present and perennially entertaining 'Irishman&rsquo…

Terry Prone got into an argument on a TV show at thirteen. It marked her out as a fearless teenager willing to take on anybody. Soon she was a regular panellist on The Late Late Show.At fifteen, she lied about her age to get into …

How do people transform a house or flat into a home that nourishes both body and soul? How do they engage in the alchemy of homemaking? This book focuses a scholarly lens on one homemaking practice, dresser- and delph-keeping in w…

Across artificial intelligence, climate change, food safety, transport and communication, the fields of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) are integral to modern society. Through a selection of 46 lives from t…

In a county where success is weighed in medals, the Ó Sé brothers all hung up their boots with heavy hearts but even heavier pockets: a combined total of 16 All-Irelands, 28 Munsters and 12 All-Stars making their way back to An Gh…

This book tells the stories of some great GAA locations and the people linked with them. It includes obvious places like Croke Park, the Polo Grounds, Hayes's Hotel, Biddy Early's lake, the family, to less obvious places like, Fij…

The two opposing political figures that shaped Irish life in the 1980s and beyond. In the 1980s, Irish politics was dominated by a fierce rivalry between Charles J. Haughey and Dr Garret FitzGerald, both leaders of their respectiv…

The head of the Guinness family tells the true story of how his ancestors created the largest brewery in the world. In this narrative non-fiction book, Arthur Edward Guinness, the 4th Earl of Iveagh and head of the Guinness family…

The Book of Chad or the Gospel of Teilo is the earliest extant Welsh version of the Latin Gospels. This is a reprint of Hopkins-James' transcription of the manuscript of 1934, with a critique, a history of the text, its charcteris…

A vivid description of the fierce and free Celtic spirit as it has been sustained through history, and a vision for living that spirit in the present.      

As in Great Britain, the period from the mid-1950s onward saw considerable changes to the railways of Ireland, including contraction, for example, the demise of the final narrow-gauge lines and the complexities of the division of …

Keane's subject is the fruitful tension between tradition and the poet's indivual talent, his legacy as it is made new in particular poems. In examining the poetry of William Butler Yeats, Keane traces literary, philosophic, and s…

Haunted English explores the role of language in colonization and decolonization by examining how Anglo-Celtic modernists W. B. Yeats, Hugh MacDiarmid, and Marianne Moore "de-Anglicize" their literary vernaculars.Laura O'Connor de…

In Scandal Work: James Joyce, the New Journalism, and the Home Rule Newspaper Wars, Margot Gayle Backus charts the rise of the newspaper sex scandal across the fin de siècle British archipelago and explores its impact on the work …

Do indigenous peoples have an unassailable right to the land they have worked and lived on, or are those rights conferred and protected only when a powerful political authority exists? In the tradition of John Locke and Thomas Hob…

On Land and Water combines the work of photographer Sheena Jolley and poet D.J. O’Sullivan. Sheena Jolley has gained a huge international reputation as a wildlife photographer and will be well known to Irish television viewers as …

In 1981, the Stardust nightclub in Dublin was a beacon for the city's nightlife - until it became a nightmare. On that fateful Valentine's Day the dance floor became a scene of horror, as flames engulfed the venue, claiming the li…

Beneath our feet, in our hedgerows, trees and under our seas lies a complex community of beings that goes unseen and unheard by us humans. Soil is the stuff of life itself, bustling with microbes, fungi, beetles and earthworms tha…

The Bailout Babies dives into the lives of a generation caught between Ireland’s crash and comeback. Born in the boom, they grew up in an era of good jobs, easy debt and leisurely brunches. But before they were old enough to benef…

Harry Barry's life and career has been shaped by defining events: a solitary childhood with chronic illness, a traumatic experience in school, and family tragedies that set him on a course of dedicating his life to medicine and he…

She Died Young is the literary work of an astonishing mind in which intellect, madness, art and raw honesty unite. It is as far from a ‘celebrity memoir’ as you can get. With humour, honesty and a poetic sensibility, Brenda Fricke…

Hurling is Ireland’s national game – a source of fascination and pride, even to people who have never played it. Ciarán Murphy, a lifelong club footballer, used to be one of those people. Then he spent a summer trying to play hurl…