This book explores Irish experiences of medicine and health during the First and Second World Wars, the War of Independence and the Civil War. It examines the physical, mental and emotional impact of conflict on Irish political and social life, as well as medical, scientific and official interventions in Irish health matters. The contributors put forward the case that warfare and political unrest profoundly shaped Irish experiences of medicine and health, and that Irish political, social and economic contexts added unique contours to those experiences not evident in other countries. In pursuing these themes, the book offers an original and focused intervention into a central, but so far unexplored, area of Irish medical history.

Based on interviews of lone mothers with young dependent children. Looks at the economic and social circumstances of a group of lone mothers in north Dublin.

Ireland's Celtic Tiger economy has been held up as a model of successful development in a globalized world, offering lessons for other late developing countries. It interrogates the principal theoretical approaches which have been used to analyze the Celtic Tiger, particularly neo-classical economics, and finds them inadequate to capture its ambiguities or address its developmental deficit. Elaborating an alternative approach, drawing particularly on the work of Karl Polanyi, the book offers an interpretation which captures more fully the ways in which the Irish State has made itself subservient to market forces. The options now facing Irish society are mapped out through a critical examination of globalization, identifying possibilities for development and social action.