On RTÉ's The Meaning of Life, Gay Byrne has spoken with public figures about these questions and many others.

More big questions – and more interesting answers – from Gay Byrne's hugely popular RTÉ TV show We all look for meaning in our lives and here twenty well-known public figures share what gives their lives meaning, prompting us to ponder the question ourselves and perhaps even find some answers. Following last year's bestselling The Meaning of Life, Gay Byrne is back with more insightful discussions on the big themes that bind us all: childhood, love, faith, disbelief, morality, religion, grief. Based on his popular and long-running RTÉ TV show, The Meaning of Life 2 explores life's big questions with an array of fascinating public figures, among them Ronan Keating, Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh, Ian Paisley and Imelda May. With Peter McVerry he ponders whether life is shaped by accidents or by the way people respond to accidents. Mary Robinson reveals the beliefs and values that fuel her formidable moral engine. Eamon Dunphy's early experiences led him to believe that 'everyone is magnificent in their own way', and Edna O'Brien discusses her struggles with the Catholic Church after the infamous banning of The Country Girls. 'There are many pearls of wisdom to be harvested from the human oysters featured here who share with me the beliefs, values, thoughts and experiences that have shaped, or been shaped by, their lives.' Gay Byrne The Meaning of Life 2: Table of Contents Preface by Gay Byrne - Imelda May - Peter McVerry - Mary Robinson - Brian Cody - Ian Paisley - J. P. Donleavy - Emily O'Reilly - John Lonergan - Ronan Keating - Maureen Gaffney - Sean O'Sullivan - Christina Noble - Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh - Fionnula Flanagan - Colm Tóibín - Mary Byrne - Colm Wilkinson - Celine Byrne - Edna O'Brien - Eamon DunphyFor each book sold, a donation will be made to The Peter McVerry Trust and The Christina Noble Children's Foundation.

Following last year's bestselling collection of interviews from the RTE TV series The Meaning of Life, Gay Byrne is back with more big questions -- and more interesting answers. With Peter McVerry, he ponders whether life is shaped by accidents or by the way people respond to accidents. Mary Robinson reveals the beliefs and values that fuel her formidable moral engine. Eamon Dunphy's early experiences led him to believe that "everyone is magnificent in their own way," and Edna O'Brien discusses her struggles with the Catholic Church after the infamous banning of The Country Girls. We all look for meaning in our lives and here twenty well-known public figures share what gives their lives meaning, prompting us to ponder the question ourselves and perhaps even find some answers.

In vivid, melodic prose, Gabriel revisits his childhood in Ireland, a world that has long since been renovated by time, and juxtaposes these memories with scenes from later years, in which he develops and occupies that strange identity of movie star. Impressionistic and sensual, Byrne's visions of home, of boyhood and adolescence, are gracefully interspersed with jump-cuts to pointedly unglamorous scenes from his life as he becomes an actor, as he becomes celebrated, as he becomes forever recognizable. Byrne is interested in exploring the pathos in what it means to be famous, in what it means to be praised when everything you’ve learned tells you that are not worthy of praise.

Packed with new evidence, Making Oscar Wilde tells the untold story of a local Irish eccentric who became a global cultural icon. This must-read book dramatizes Oscar Wilde's remarkable rise in Victorian England and post-Civil War America. Michèle Mendelssohn interweaves biography and social history to reveal a life like no other.

It is no exaggeration to call Gay Byrne a colossus of the Irish broadcasting scene. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, as host of both the Late Late Show and the Gay Byrne Show, he played a seminal role in the shift in Irish society and culture from the Church-dominated fearful state of the early 1960s to the modern multicultural Ireland we live in today. The Gaybo Revolution examines the significance of Gay Byrne's influence on this maturation of Irish society, while simultaneously highlighting the centrality of the talk show genre in Irish life. Equally reviled and revered, Byrne has been referred to as "the great window-opener" and a "media lay priest". But his influence in single-channel Ireland is undeniable. Using letters to the editor, media articles, recent studies of Irish culture, quotes from Byrne himself and a re-examination of the original broadcasts, The Gaybo Revolution explores how Byrne and his talk shows, on both radio and television, provided a forum for popular debate and acted as catalysts for change in Irish life. It analyses and discusses the impact on Irish society of such controversies as Church denunciations of the Late Late Show, the Brian Trevaskis affair, the development of the Irish Women's Liberation Movement, the Ann Lovett letters, and the seminal interviews with Annie Murphy, Pádraig Flynn and Terry Keane. In the final section of the book, the modern history of the Late Late Show, the development of Irish TV and radio talk shows in the post-Byrne era and the contrasting nature of TV talk shows in the UK and US are explored. The Gaybo Revolution will appeal to all those who wish to understand the evolution of Irish society and culture in the late twentieth century and the substantial impact of Irish media on this change.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • David Byrne’s incisive and enthusiastic look at the musical art form, from its very inceptions to the influences that shape it, whether acoustical, economic, social, or technological—now updated with a new chapter on digital curation. “How Music Works is a buoyant hybrid of social history, anthropological survey, autobiography, personal philosophy, and business manual”—The Boston Globe Utilizing his incomparable career and inspired collaborations with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and many others, David Byrne taps deeply into his lifetime of knowledge to explore the panoptic elements of music, how it shapes the human experience, and reveals the impetus behind how we create, consume, distribute, and enjoy the songs, symphonies, and rhythms that provide the backbeat of life. Byrne’s magnum opus uncovers thrilling realizations about the redemptive liberation that music brings us all.

Republished for its 50th anniversary, Sit Down and Be Counted is an account of the establishment and early years of RTE television, by the people at the heart of defining what Irish television would be. With direct relevance to current debates on the role of public service broadcasting, and the impact of technology and advertising on its funding model, the authors set out a critique of broadcasting policy and practice which speaks to today's hottest issues.

Annabelle Aster doesn't bow to convention—not even that of space and time—which makes the 1890s Kansas wheat field that has appeared in her modern-day San Francisco garden easy to accept. Even more peculiar is Elsbeth, the truculent schoolmarm who sends Annie letters through the mysterious brass mailbox perched on the picket fence that now divides their two worlds. Annie and Elsbeth's search for an explanation to the hiccup in the universe linking their homes leads to an unsettling discovery—and potential disaster for both of them. Together they must solve the mystery of what connects them before one of them is convicted of a murder that has yet to happen...and yet somehow already did.