Join Trinity's Professor Luke O'Neill on the greatest journey of them all. From the very big to the very small - vast galaxies to microscopic atoms - travel through the wonders of the universe, the mysteries of the human body, and the tiny world of molecules. Discover the Irish scientists that have helped to shape our world and find out how to become one yourself. How do we measure the universe? Why do we need plants? How do our bodies repair themselves when we are ill? What species will exist on earth in a million years' time? Discover the answers to these questions and a lot more in this thrilling and engrossing book packed with fascinating phenomena, vibrant illustrations, experiments you can do yourself, and heaps of fun facts.

Professor Luke O'Neill has become one of the most well-known and trusted voices of Ireland's COVID-19 pandemic, thrust into the spotlight as we struggled to make sense of a crisis that saw the country grind to a halt. In these personal diaries, Luke reveals what life was like behind the scenes as he endeavoured to keep calm and trust that the science would save us. Luke's lockdown diaries show the highs and lows of work at the cutting edge in his Trinity College lab, as well as his experience of the disappointments and the breakthroughs in science around the world, and ultimately the contribution scientists made to the health outcomes of millions globally. Shot through with the natural positivity and humour that have made Luke a home-grown hero, Keep Calm and Trust the Science is a compelling account of a dramatic year in Irish history from one of its key players.

Here Ireland's premier economic historian and one of the leading authorities on the Great Irish Famine examines the most lethal natural disaster to strike Europe in the nineteenth century. Between the mid-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, the food source that we still call the Irish potato had allowed the fastest population growth in the whole of Western Europe. As vividly described in Ó Gráda's new work, the advent of the blight phytophthora infestans transformed the potato from an emblem of utility to a symbol of death by starvation. The Irish famine peaked in Black '47, but it brought misery and increased mortality to Ireland for several years. Central to Irish and British history, European demography, the world history of famines, and the story of American immigration, the Great Irish Famine is presented here from a variety of new perspectives. Moving away from the traditional narrative historical approach to the catastrophe, Ó Gráda concentrates instead on fresh insights available through interdisciplinary and comparative methods. He highlights several economic and sociological features of the famine previously neglected in the literature, such as the part played by traders and markets, by medical science, and by migration. Other topics include how the Irish climate, usually hospitable to the potato, exacerbated the failure of the crops in 1845-1847, and the controversial issue of Britain's failure to provide adequate relief to the dying Irish. Ó Gráda also examines the impact on urban Dublin of what was mainly a rural disaster and offers a critical analysis of the famine as represented in folk memory and tradition. The broad scope of this book is matched by its remarkable range of sources, published and archival. The book will be the starting point for all future research into the Irish famine.

An innovative examination of Irish science fiction from the 1850s to the present day, covering material written both in Irish and in English. Considering science fiction novels and short stories in their historical context, it analyses a body of literature that has largely been ignored by Irish literature researchers.

A number one Irish bestseller, and winner of the Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards In this fascinating and thought-provoking book, Professor Luke O'Neill grapples with life's biggest questions and tells us what science has to say about them. Covering topics from global pandemics to gender, addiction to euthanasia, Luke O'Neill's easy wit and clever pop-culture references deconstruct the science to make complex questions accessible. Arriving at science's definitive answers to some of the most controversial topics human beings have to grapple with, Never Mind the B#ll*ocks, Here's the Science is a celebration of science and hard facts in a time of fake news and sometimes unhelpful groupthink. 'A celebration of scientific fact in an era characterised by nebulous subjectivity' Irish Times

The latest book in the Gill Books series of important topics tackled by experts, this engaging guide demystifies political systems, elections, voting, and government, and explores issues including human rights, freedom of speech, and fake news.

Since W. B. Yeats wrote in 1890 that “the man of science is too often a person who has exchanged his soul for a formula,” the anti-scientific bent of Irish literature has often been taken as a given. Science, Technology, and Irish Modernism brings together leading and emerging scholars of Irish modernism to challenge the stereotype that Irish literature has been unconcerned with scientific and technological change. The collection spotlights authors ranging from James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Flann O’Brien, and Samuel Beckett to less-studied writers like Emily Lawless, John Eglinton, Denis Johnston, and Lennox Robinson. With chapters on naturalism, futurism, dynamite, gramophones, uncertainty, astronomy, automobiles, and more, this book showcases the far-reaching scope and complexity of Irish writers’ engagement with innovations in science and technology. Taken together, the fifteen original essays in Science, Technology, and Irish Modernism map a new literary landscape of Ireland in the twentieth century. By focusing on writers’ often-ignored interest in science and technology, this book uncovers shared concerns between revivalists, modernists, and late modernists that challenge us to rethink how we categorize and periodize Irish literature.