Ireland's bestselling popular historian tells the story of contemporary Ireland - controversial, authoritative and highly readable. Tim Pat Coogan's biographies of Michael Collins and DeValera and his studies of the IRA, the Troubles and the Irish Diaspora have transformed our understanding of contemporary Ireland, and all have been massive bestsellers. Now he has produced a major history of Ireland in the twentieth century. Covering both South and North and dealing with cultural and social history as well as political, this enthralling work will become the definitive single-volume account of the making of modern Ireland.

History did not have to work out the way it actually did. Ferriter looks at twenty events in twentieth-century Irish life and wonders how they might have been different: What if Joyce and Beckett had stayed in Ireland? What if Britain had blocked Irish immigration in the 1950s? What if there had been no 'Late Late Show'?

What did the Easter Rising really change? / Peter Hart -- Ending war in a "sportsmanlike manner" : the milestone of revolution, 1919-23 / Anne Dolan -- Women's political rhetoric and the Irish revolution / Jason Knirck -- The problem of equality : women's activist campaigns in Ireland, 1920-40 / Maria Luddy -- Nuanced neutrality and Irish identity : an idiosyncratic legacy / Thomas E. Hachey -- Modernity, the past and politics in post-war Ireland / Enda Delaney -- "Ireland is an unusual place" : President Kennedy's 1963 visit and the complexity of recognition / Mike Cronin -- Sex and the archbishop : John Charles McQuaid and social change in 1960s Ireland / Diarmaid Ferriter -- Turmoil in the sea of faith : the secularization of Irish social culture, 1960-2007 / Tom Garvin -- The Irish Cattholic narrative : reflections on milestones / Louise Fuller -- Some fitting and adequate recognition : a new direction for civic portraiture in nineteenth-century Ireland's industrial capital / Gillian McIntosh -- The origins of the peace process / Thomas Hennessey.

Traces the social and political history of Ireland since the partition in the 1920s.

This book analyzes the relationship between the Irish State and the Jewish community in the 1930s. The author assesses Ireland's humanitarian record during the Holocaust and finally traces the history of the Irish Jewish community from the 1950s to the 1990s.

The twentieth century was a time of rapid social change in Ireland: from colonial rule to independence, civil war and later the Troubles; from poverty to globalisation and the Celtic Tiger; and from the rise to the fall of the Catholic Church. Policing in Ireland has been shaped by all of these changes. This book critically evaluates the creation of the new police force, an Garda Síochána, in the 1920s and analyses how this institution was influenced by and responded to these substantial changes. Beginning with an overview of policing in pre-independence Ireland, this book chronologically charts the history of policing in Ireland. It presents data from oral history interviews with retired gardaí who served between the 1950s and 1990s, giving unique insight into the experience of policing Ireland, the first study of its kind in Ireland. Particular attention is paid to the difficulties of transition, the early encounters with the IRA, the policing of the Blueshirts, the world wars, gangs in Dublin and the growth of drugs and crime. Particularly noteworthy is the analysis of policing the Troubles and the immense difficulties that generated. This book is essential reading for those interested in policing or Irish history, but is equally important for those concerned with the legacy of colonialism and transition.

Explores the extraordinary relationship the Irish have with alcohol from the point of view of the group who were intent on reducing alcohol consumption through membership in the Pioneer Total Abstinence of the Sacred Heart. The Pioneers was formed in 1898, by the mid 1950s the association was to claim a membership of nearly half a million, identifiable by the wearing of a pin, the outward expression of an internal and deeply personal piety. It was a startling figure for such a small country but the stereotype of the Irish as a nation of heavy drinkers continued unabated, aided by vast expenditure on alcohol. As the century progressed two diametrically opposed cultures - abstinence and heavy drinking - were lying alongside each other. Ferriter makes use of previously unpublished sources, examines the Irish temperance movement in the context of Irish society as a whole and attempts to tease out some of the intricacies and ambiguities associated with these two cultures. Although the leaders of this temperance crusade insisted that it was primarily a religious movement, given the pervasiveness of the Irish drink culture it was inevitable that in their desire to transform attitudes they would have to involve themselves in the wider, and more material debates about the role of drink in Irish society. The fact that the movement was founded at a time of intense cultural nationalism gave these debates an added potency, particularly as it had often been contended that increased sobriety was essential for any self-respecting self-governing nation. After Independence, the quest for sobriety and an initially robust Catholic crusade ultimately led to confrontation and confusion.