Non Fiction

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Cathal Brugha An Indomitable Spirit
€24.95
By any measure, Cathal Brugha’s life was extraordinary: a member of the Gaelic League, Irish Republican Brotherhood and Irish Volunteers; a celebrated survivor of the 1916 Rising, despite multiple gunshot wounds; a crucial figure in the post-Rising reorganization of the Volunteers and Sinn Féin; speaker at the first sitting of Dáil Éireann and president pro tempore; minister for defence in the underground government during the War of Independence; passionate and acerbic opponent of the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921; a reluctant participant in the Irish civil war, having tried to prevent it; and that conflict’s first high profile fatality in July 1922.

Based on exhaustive research, this book challenges the often simplistic and reductive depiction of Brugha by providing a nuanced and multi-layered reappraisal of him. It chronicles his public and private life and the influences that shaped him; assesses his multifaceted involvement in the Irish Revolution and his uncompromising commitment to an Irish republic; contextualizes his relationships with contemporaries such as Michael Collins, Éamon de Valera and Richard Mulcahy; explores how his premature death at the age of forty-seven affected his young family and how his wife, Caitlín, upheld his political principles by standing as a Sinn Féin TD; and reflects on how Brugha’s indomitable patriotism was propagandized after his death. The result is a fascinating portrait of a complex, tenacious, and often misunderstood figure.

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In the Shadow of Benbulben
€19.95
Description

In January 1939, just months after hanging up his boots and a few weeks into his new career as a talent scout, William Ralph ‘Dixie’ Dean, the former Everton and England legend, received a surprise request for assistance from the far west of Ireland. Could he find a goalscorer for Sligo Rovers – the beating heart of a small, provincial town – to drive their dreams of a lucrative cup run and help protect the club’s very existence? Dean set about finding the right man, but unable to locate candidates willing to make the move across the Irish Sea, he had an idea. What if he were to answer Sligo’s call? And so began the unlikely story of how one of the greatest centre-forwards ever to grace the game added an unexpected and ultimately uplifting chapter to his storied football career.

In the Shadow of Benbulben is a romantic tale of divine intervention, uncanny timing and drama on and off the pitch. It’s the tale of ‘Dixie’ Dean’s four months with the Bit O’Red that was to leave an indelible mark on the player, the club and the town.

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In Love
€15.50
In January 2020, Amy Bloom travelled with her husband Brian to Switzerland, where he was helped by Dignitas to end his life while Amy sat with him and held his hand. Brian was terminally ill and for the last year of his life Amy had struggled to find a way to support his wish to take control of his death, to not submerge ‘into the darkness of an expiring existence’. Written with piercing insight and wit, In Love is Bloom’s intimate, authentic and startling account of losing Brian, first slowly to the disease of Alzheimer’s, and then on becoming a widow.

It charts the anxiety and pain of the process that led them to Dignitas, while never avoiding the complex ethical problems that are raised by assisted death. A poignant love letter to Bloom’s husband and a passionate outpouring of grief, In Love reaffirms the power and value of human relationships.

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I See You
€15.00
I See You is a collection of interviews from musicians, artists and activists, curated by Thom Yorke. Thom Yorke is responsible for the questions asked during the interviews and also answers the questions for the zine’s preface.

Featured names include the environmentalist and writer George Monbiot, Orkney-born performance poet Harry Josephine and director and screenwriter Luca Guadagnino. Further interviews are provided by electronic composer Laurie Spiegel, experimental musician Kali Malone and visual artist Christian Holstad, New York-based painter and printmaker Amy Cutler and Jun Takahashi, founder of fashion brand Undercover.

The zine’s artwork is by Stanley Donwood and Tchocky, with additional art courtesy of Holstad. It was designed and produced by Crack Magazine and printed by Generation Press – a leading organisation in sustainable printing.

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My Friend Anna
€8.00
How does it feel to be betrayed by your closest friend? A close friend who turns out to be the most prolific grifter in New York City…

This is the true story of Anna Delvey (real name Anna Sorokin), the fake heiress whose dizzying deceit and elaborate con-artistry deceived the Soho hipster scene before her ruse was finally and dramatically exposed. After meeting through mutual friends, the ‘Russian heiress’ Anna Delvey and Rachel DeLoache Williams soon became inseparable.

Theirs was an intoxicating world of endless excess: high dining, personal trainer sessions, a luxury holiday … and Anna footed almost every bill. But after Anna’s debit card was declined in a Moroccan medina whilst on holiday in a five-star luxury resort, Rachel began to suspect that her increasingly mysterious friend was not all she seemed.

This is the incredible story of how Anna Sorokin conned the high-rollers of the NYC social scene and convinced her close friend of an entirely concocted fantasy, the product of falsified bank documents, bad cheques and carefully edited online photos. Written by Rachel DeLoache Williams, the Vanity Fair photography editor who believed Anna’s lies before helping the police to track her down (fittingly, deciphering Anna’s location using Instagram), this is Catch Me If You Can with Instagram filters. Between Anna, Fyre Festival’s Billy McFarland (Anna even tried to scam Billy) and Elizabeth Holmes, whose start-up app duped the high and mighty of Silicon Valley, this is the year of the scammer.

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Islands of Abandonment
€12.50
This is a book about abandoned places: ghost towns and exclusion zones, no man’s lands and fortress islands – and what happens when nature is allowed to reclaim its place. In Chernobyl, following the nuclear disaster, only a handful of people returned to their dangerously irradiated homes. On an uninhabited Scottish island, feral cattle live entirely wild.

In Detroit, once America’s fourth-largest city, entire streets of houses are falling in on themselves, looters slipping through otherwise silent neighbourhoods. This book explores the extraordinary places where humans no longer live – or survive in tiny, precarious numbers – to give us a possible glimpse of what happens when mankind’s impact on nature is forced to stop. From Tanzanian mountains to the volcanic Caribbean, the forbidden areas of France to the mining regions of Scotland, Flyn brings together some of the most desolate, eerie, ravaged and polluted areas in the world – and shows how, against all odds, they offer our best opportunities for environmental recovery.

By turns haunted and hopeful, this luminously written world study is pinned together with profound insight and new ecological discoveries that together map an answer to the big questions: what happens after we’re gone, and how far can our damage to nature be undone?

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The Irish Butterfly Book
€35.00
HARDING, JESMOND

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Brilliant Maps
€18.00
Description

WITH A FOREWORD BY TIM HARFORD

Which nations have North Korean embassies? Which region has the highest number of death metal bands per capita? How many countries have bigger economies than California? Who drives on the ‘wrong’ side of the road? And where can you find lions in the wild?Revelatory, thought-provoking and fun, Brilliant Maps is a unique atlas of culture, history, politics and miscellanea, compiled by the editor of the iconic Brilliant Maps website. As visually arresting as Information is Beautiful and as full of surprising facts and figures as any encyclopaedia, Brilliant Maps is a stunning piece of cartography that maps our curious and varied planet. For graphic design enthusiasts, compulsive Wikipedia readers and those looking for the sort of gift they buy for someone else and wind up keeping for themselves, this book will change the way you see the world and your place in it.

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The Lyrics
€75.00
A self-portrait in 154 songs, by our greatest living songwriter’More often than I can count, I’ve been asked if I would write an autobiography, but the time has never been right. The one thing I’ve always managed to do, whether at home or on the road, is to write new songs. I know that some people, when they get to a certain age, like to go to a diary to recall day-to-day events from the past, but I have no such notebooks.

What I do have are my songs, hundreds of them, which I’ve learned serve much the same purpose. And these songs span my entire life.’ In this extraordinary book, with unparalleled candour, Paul McCartney recounts his life and art through the prism of 154 songs from all stages of his career – from his earliest boyhood compositions through the legendary decade of The Beatles, to Wings and his solo albums to the present. Arranged alphabetically to provide a kaleidoscopic rather than chronological account, it establishes definitive texts of the songs’ lyrics for the first time and describes the circumstances in which they were written, the people and places that inspired them, and what he thinks of them now.

Presented with this is a treasure trove of material from McCartney’s personal archive – drafts, letters, photographs – never seen before, which make this also a unique visual record of one of the greatest songwriters of all time. We learn intimately about the man, the creative process, the working out of melodies, the moments of inspiration. The voice and personality of Paul McCartney sings off every page.

There has never been a book about a great musician like it. Each volume is 480 pp, not available separately

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News from Under a Coat Stand
€15.00
The first six months of 2020 were the strangest of times. An unknown virus was spreading globally that brought social distancing, incredible uncertainty and sadly death. It also brought cocooning, the 2 km travel limit and delicious banana bread. Working from home in Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim, RTÉ Journalist Carole Coleman kept a detailed diary of Covid’s first 100 days. Her lively personal story may remind you of your own town, family and friends – or amaze you about what you missed. While home schooling teenagers, remotely broadcasting Sunday’s This Week radio programme, and chatting with nearly everyone, “News from Under a Coat Stand” provides a poignant, serious, yet often hilarious account of a time Ireland and the world will never forget.

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Fight or Flight
€21.95
Keith Earls started out in senior rugby as a teenage star and during the course of his long career has become one of the most admired and respected players of his generation. A British & Irish Lion at the age of 21, he is now closing in on his 34th birthday and still playing at the top of his game. He has won 93 caps for Ireland and played 179 times in the famous red of Munster.

He started every game of the 2018 Six Nations campaign that culminated in an Irish Grand Slam victory. A lethal finisher blessed with thoroughbred speed, Earls is the second-highest try scorer of all time for his country. With Munster he is one try short of the all-time total and looks set to break that record next season.

Behind the glittering success, there is another story to be told. He has achieved these milestones whilst being racked by private battles with his mental health for most of his career. A number of crises brought him to the brink of voluntary retirement from the game.

A long series of injuries have taken their psychological toll too. A native of Limerick city, Earls grew up in one of its most socially disadvantaged housing estates. Moyross was blighted by crime and violence and he did not escape unscathed from the surrounding fear and trauma visited upon his beloved community.

His natural sporting talent brought him into the privileged bastion of elite rugby union. His frank and fearless autobiography tells the story of his long struggle to reconcile the world whence he came with the world opened up by his brilliance with an oval ball. Earls has maintained a low profile throughout his career.

For the first time he will talk in depth and at length about the inner turmoil that went unseen by team-mates, friends and fans. It is a confessional, intimate and courageous story of the pain that was a constant companion to the glory.

9781914197093

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Renegades
€24.95
Two long-time friends share an intimate and urgent conversation about life, music and their enduring love of America, with all its challenges and contradictions, in this stunningly-produced expansion of their ground-breaking Higher Ground podcast, featuring more than 350 photographs, exclusive bonus content, and never-before-seen archival material. Renegades: Born in the USA is a candid, revealing, and entertaining dialogue between President Barack Obama and legendary musician Bruce Springsteen that explores everything from their origin stories and career-defining moments to their country’s polarized politics and the growing distance between the American Dream and the American reality. Filled with full-colour photographs and rare archival material, it is a compelling and beautifully illustrated portrait of two outsiders-one Black and one white-looking for a way to connect their unconventional searches for meaning, identity, and community with the American story itself.

Along the way, they reveal their passion for-and the occasional toll of-telling a bigger, truer story about America throughout their careers, and explore how their fractured country might begin to find its way back toward unity.

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Devotion
€21.95
A moving and lyrical memoir about life, love and loss, from a true giant of Gaelic games. In a frenetic seven-year spell at the outset of his senior managerial career, Mickey Harte led Tyrone to four Ulster Championships and three All-Irelands.

It was a run that shifted football’s balance of power, changed the way the game would be played for over a generation, and cemented his reputation as one of the most transformative figures in GAA history. Then, in January 2011, the visitation of a shocking tragedy changed everything: Mickey’s daughter Michaela was murdered while on honeymoon in Mauritius, and the Harte family, grief-stricken, awoke to find themselves at the centre of an international news story. Devotion, the product of a collaboration between Mickey and author Brendan Coffey, is many things.

The story of a family’s decade-long struggle to come to terms with an almost unimaginable loss. A meditation on the ways in which faith, community, and sport can sustain us in our most difficult moments. And, finally, a portrait of one of Irish sport’s true icons, as he brings one legendary era to a close and steels himself for a final assault on the history books.

9780008473037

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The Turning of the Year
€17.95
Description
From the author of the hugely successful book Legendary Ireland, The Turning of the Year explores the Celtic division of the year, from Samhain to Imbolc, to Bealtaine, to Lunasa, back to Samhain. It examines the significance of particular times of the year and features re-tellings of various legends associated with them. The book will look at the close connection of the Irish with the land and with nature, bringing us on an exhilarating journey through the Irish seasons and the customs that welcomed each one in turn.

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Journey to the Well
€15.95
For sisters Mary Kennedy and Deirdre Ni Chinneide, spirituality has been at the centre of their lives since childhood. Their home in St Brigid’s Road in Clondalkin, Dublin, was around the corner from a holy well, a place that signalled family, community, and divine ritual. Drawing on Celtic spirituality – a key focus in Deirdre’s work as a psychotherapist, retreat leader and singer, and a long-held area of interest for much-loved broadcaster and author Mary – in Journey to the Well, the sisters share a voyage, as they invite us to journey with them through the Celtic seasons of Samhain, Imbolc, Bealtaine, and Lughnasa.

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Tea for One
€18.95
Description

Many of us spend the later years of life living solo when children have grown up and moved on. Others choose this lifestyle. We get used to being on our own while also enjoying family and communal occasions.

But 2020 brought new challenges to this solo lifestyle. We rose to the first challenge thinking that it would all be over in a matter of weeks. But no.

Instead came a series of on-again off-again lockdowns of different levels. This was a new, radical, solitary living experience which was really going to test our endurance and resilience. Would the coping skills we had already acquired see us through? But this was more a hermitage existence than we had ever experienced and it would really test our mettle.

Then, gradually, a realisation dawned that maybe there were things to be learnt from this unique situation? Might we discover a new understanding and appreciation of things previously ignored? Alice began to wonder how best to handle this new, solitary experience, and to document her progress though this most extraordinary year. This is her journey.

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