Non Fiction

Showing 81–96 of 155 resultsSorted by latest

Happy-Go-Lucky
€13.50
In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.

‘Unquestionably the king of comic writing’ HADLEY FREEMAN, Guardian

‘Although Sedaris is famous for being funny, he does pain heartbreakingly well’ MELISSA KATSOULIS, The Times

‘His wickedly hilarious riffs are pyrotechnics in words’ PETER CONRAD, Observer

Add to basket
Walfrid
€23.95
Andrew Kerins [Brother Walfrid] [1840 – 1915] was one of
the most significant Irish immigrants to Scotland. He
was an outstanding individual in relation to Catholic
education and charity in Glasgow and a major
contributor to the emergence of organised sport in
Scotland in the late nineteenth century.
He was but one individual, amongst countless thousands
of victims, who survived the catastrophe of An Gorta Mor
in Ireland, only to be forced to leave behind family,
community and homeland in the hope of finding a
better life overseas. Over one million others perished
owing to the prevalence of starvation and disease during
Ireland’s darkest period. Kerins left for Glasgow as a
fifteen-year-old boy and the spectre of hunger,
accompanied by a concern for the spiritual and physical
well-being of others, are motifs which endured
throughout his long and impactful life.

Add to basket
The Boy Who Started Celtic
€12.00
THIS BOOK is the story of a boy, a calf and one of
the biggest football clubs in the world.
It is also a story of how one person can change
many people’s lives.
All great journeys begin with a single step. As a
boy, Brother Walfrid did not know he was starting
a great journey when he sold a calf at County
Sligo’s Ballymote Fair and took the boat to
Scotland.
Every day, people are starting great journeys and
they don’t even know it. They are just trying, like
Walfrid, to make people’s lives better by helping
others who are not as fortunate as them. Walfrid
helped people and started one of the world’s most
well-known football clubs.
Perhaps readers of Brother Walfrid’s story may
start a great journey of their own one day?

Add to basket
My Fourth Time, We Drowned
€13.50
The Western world has turned its back on refugees, fuelling one of the most devastating human rights disasters in history.

In August 2018, Sally Hayden received a Facebook message. ‘Hi sister Sally, we need your help,’ it read. ‘We are under bad condition in Libya prison. If you have time, I will tell you all the story.’ More messages followed from more refugees. They told stories of enslavement and trafficking, torture and murder, tuberculosis and sexual abuse.

And they revealed something else: that they were all incarcerated as a direct result of European policy. From there began a staggering investigation into the migrant crisis across North Africa. This book follows the shocking experiences of refugees seeking sanctuary, but it also surveys the bigger picture: the negligence of NGOs and corruption within the United Nations.

The economics of the twenty-first-century slave trade and the EU’s bankrolling of Libyan militias. The trials of people smugglers, the frustrations of aid workers, the loopholes refugees seek out and the role of social media in crowdfunding ransoms. Who was accountable for the abuse? Where were the people finding solutions? Why wasn’t it being widely reported? At its heart, this is a book about people who have made unimaginable choices, risking everything to survive in a system that wants them to be silent and disappear.

Add to basket
Spare
€26.95
It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow – and horror. As Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling – and how their lives would play out from that point on. For Harry, this is that story at last.

With its raw, unflinching honesty, Spare is a landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief. Prince Harry wishes to support British charities with donations from his proceeds from Spare. The Duke of Sussex has donated $1,500,000 to Sentebale, an organisation he founded with Prince Seeiso in their mothers’ legacies, which supports vulnerable children and young people in Lesotho and Botswana affected by HIV/AIDS.

Prince Harry will also donate to the non-profit organisation WellChild in the amount of GBP300,000. WellChild, which he has been Royal patron of for fifteen years, makes it possible for children and young people with complex health needs to be cared for at home instead of hospital, wherever possible.

Add to basket
Mr. Attention To Detail
€12.95
KELLY, JOE

Add to basket
Warrior Queens and Quiet Revolutionaries
€14.95
Description

‘One brilliant woman writing about so many other brilliant women, this is a wonderful treasure chest of women’s lives, full of wit, verve and emotion . . .

Epic, unputdownable, gripping. I loved it’ – Professor Kate Williams”My hope is that this book will inspire as I have been inspired. It’s a love letter to the importance of history and about how, without knowing where we come from – truthfully and entirely – we cannot know who we are.”Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries is a celebration of unheard and under-heard women’s history.

Add to basket
Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing
€19.95
‘Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name.

My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.’

So begins the riveting story of acclaimed actor Matthew Perry, taking us along on his journey from childhood ambition to fame to addiction and recovery in the aftermath of a life-threatening health scare. Before the frequent hospital visits and stints in rehab, there was five-year-old Matthew, who travelled from Montreal to Los Angeles, shuffling between his separated parents; fourteen-year-old Matthew, who was a nationally ranked tennis star in Canada; twenty-four-year-old Matthew, who nabbed a coveted role as a lead cast member on the talked-about pilot then called Friends Like Us.

. . and so much more.

In an extraordinary story that only he could tell – and in the heartfelt, hilarious, and warmly familiar way only he could tell it – Matthew Perry lays bare the fractured family that raised him (and also left him to his own devices), the desire for recognition that drove him to fame, and the void inside him that could not be filled even by his greatest dreams coming true.

But he also details the peace he’s found in sobriety and how he feels about the ubiquity of Friends, sharing stories about his castmates and other stars he met along the way. Frank, self-aware, and with his trademark humour, Perry vividly depicts his lifelong battle with addiction and what fuelled it despite seemingly having it all.

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is an unforgettable memoir that is both intimate and eye-opening – as well as a hand extended to anyone struggling with sobriety. Unflinchingly honest, moving, and uproariously funny, this is the book fans have been waiting for.

Add to basket
Time and Tide
€19.95
A poignant and introspective memoir from Irish journalist and broadcaster Charlie Bird. In 2021, Charlie Bird was diagnosed with motor neurone disease – a man whose voice was so synonymous with his career faced losing it completely. Yet knowing he had just a short time left with family and friends, what emerged was a great sense of resilience and motivation to take advantage of every moment.

Here, Charlie reflects on his life and phenomenal broadcast career through the lens of his diagnosis, as he ponders the big questions and takes stock of the small moments that we so often overlook. Written over the course of 2022 as his health deteriorated, with the help of long-time friend and fellow journalist Ray Burke, this is a candid and unforgettable story about the triumph of the human spirit and, ultimately, what it means to be alive.

Add to basket
The Rodfather
€21.95
Description

‘What a life, what a book. I highly recommend it’ Tadhg Coakley, Irish Examiner_________The hilarious memoir from the funniest man in football!Roddy Collins is a football man – now in the sixth decade of a career as a player (at sixteen clubs), manager (twelve clubs) and commentator. And he is a funny man: an unequalled raconteur with a sharp eye for the absurdities of the professional game and spectacular recall.

Add to basket
Listen to the Land Speak
€22.95
Description

Our ancestors developed a uniquely nature-focused society, centred on esteemed poets, seers, monks, healers and wise women who were deeply connected to the land. They used this connection to the cycles of the natural world – from which we are increasingly dissociated – as an animating force in their lives. In this illuminating new book, Manchan Magan sets out on a journey, through bogs, across rivers and over mountains, to trace these ancestor’s footsteps.

He uncovers the ancient myths that have shaped our national identity and are embedded in the strata of land that have endured through millennia – from ice ages through to famines and floods. Here, the River Shannon is a goddess, and trees and their life-sustaining root systems are hallowed. See the world in a new light in this magical exploration into the life-sustaining wisdom of what lies beneath us.

Add to basket
Forever a Rock ‘N’ Roll Kid
€16.95
If the past is a foreign country, then Charlie McGettigan is the best of tour guides. His book takes us back to Ballyshannon in the 1950s, avoiding the clichéd golden summers where sweetness and light prevailed. Instead he takes us around the back of the set to show us a ‘warts and all’ view of Irish life in what are laughingly called ‘the good old days,’ where poverty and deprivation were made worse by a dominant clerical presence and an often brutal schooling system that together succeeded in driving many young people away from both religion and education. Charlie pulls no punches but nevertheless manages to avoid being bitter, mixing the hard stories with heart-warming tales of childish fun from the pre-electronic days when you had to make your own. His stories of the hard work and dedication that brought him musical success give a snapshot of the heady days of the folk scene in Ireland in the 1970s and the 1980s, when the country seemed to be full of folk and ballad groups vying for a slice of the action. If ever the old adage of achieving overnight success after thirty years of hard graft applied to anybody, it surely applies to Charlie.

Add to basket
An Irish Atlantic Rainforest
€21.95
Description

On the Beara peninsula in West Cork, a temperate rainforest flourishes. It is the life work of Eoghan Daltun, who had a vision to rewild a 73-acre farm he bought, moving there from Dublin with his family in 2009. An Irish Atlantic Rainforest charts that remarkable journey.

Part memoir, part environmental treatise, as a wild forest bursts into life before our eyes, we’re invited to consider the burning issues of our time: climate breakdown, ecological collapse, and why our very survival as a species requires that we urgently and radically transform our relationship with nature. This is a story as much about doing nothing as taking action – allowing natural ecosystems to return and thrive without interference, and in doing so heal an ailing planet. Powerfully descriptive, lovingly told, An Irish Atlantic Rainforest presents an enduring picture of the regenerative force of nature, and how one Irishman let it happen.

Add to basket
Still Points
€17.50
Description

In an uncertain world, we all seek a sense of security and inner peace. In Still Points: A Guide to Living the Mindful Meditative Way shows us how to achieve this, simply by following a daily spiritual practice. In doing so, we enter into a deep connection to sacred stillness, revealing to us the beauty within the present moment.

In a book that can be followed throughout the year, or dipped in and out of to find ‘still points’ in times of distraction and worry, Brother Richard brings us on a transformative journey of meditation, poetry and sacred pause, enabling us to experience a sense of peace, happiness and belonging in our lives. ‘Still Points is a call to stop, to consider, to see the beauty and sacredness of ourselves in everyone and everything’ SISTER STAN

Add to basket
The Six
€30.00
It is September, 1922. As the National Army closes in on the anti-Treaty stronghold of Rahelly House in North Sligo, 120 Republicans of the 3rd Western Division abandon their headquarters and retreat to the mountains. En route to a cave hideout in the uplands, six of the men are surrounded and captured. They would not survive one of the most brutal advances of the new Free State Army. Their deaths caused outrage and bewilderment across the county and essentially marked the end of the Civil War in Sligo. These men came to be memorialised as Sligo’s Noble Six.

This book looks beyone the well-documented accounts of the execution of Sligo’s Noble Six and explores the interwoven stories of their lives, their communities, their families, and their descendants. The men’s lives are illustrated through military archives, IRA dispatches, contemporary media coverage, and previously unpublished photos. Their memorialisation through poetry and prose, monuments and gatherings, has ensured that these six men live beyond the tragedy of their deaths.

Add to basket
All Down Darkness Wide
€17.50
A luminous and haunting memoir from the prize-winning poet – a story of love, heartbreak and coming of age, and a fearless exploration of queer identity and trauma. When Sean meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe depression, the couple comes face-to-face with crisis.

Wrestling with this, Sean Hewitt delves deep into his own history, enlisting the ghosts of queer figures and poets before him. From a nineteenth-century cemetery in Liverpool to the pine forests of Gothenburg, Hewitt plumbs the darkness in search of solace and hope. All Down Darkness Wide is an unflinching meditation on the burden of living in a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds, and a tender portrayal of what it’s like to be caught in the undertow of a loved one’s suffering.

By turns devastating and soaring, it is a mesmerising story of heartache and renewal, and a work of rare and transcendent beauty.

Add to basket

Liber