OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015 TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BOOKS OF THE YEAR and OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014 WINNER OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION'S MORRIS D. FORKOSCH PRIZE 2016 'The most complete and plausible exploration of the roots of the 1916 Rebellion... essential reading' Colm Tóibín Vivid Faces surveys the lives and beliefs of the people who made the Irish Revolution: linked together by youth, radicalism, subversive activities, enthusiasm and love. Determined to reconstruct the world and defining themselves against their parents, they were in several senses a revolutionary generation. The Ireland that eventually emerged bore little relation to the brave new world they had conjured up in student societies, agit-prop theatre groups, vegetarian restaurants, feminist collectives, volunteer militias, Irish-language summer schools, and radical newspaper offices. Roy Foster's book investigates that world, and the extraordinary people who occupied it. Looking back from old age, one of the most magnetic members of the revolutionary generation reflected that 'the phoenix of our youth has fluttered to earth a miserable old hen', but he also wondered 'how many people nowadays get so much fun as we did'. Working from a rich trawl of contemporary diaries, letters and reflections, Vivid Faces re-creates the argumentative, exciting, subversive and original lives of people who made a revolution, as well as the disillusionment in which it ended.

Eric Luke has captured the essence of Irish life over the past forty years, with stunning and thought-provoking images of the people of Ireland for the Irish Press and Irish Times. Whether the subject is a film star or a gaelic football player, a fisherman or an elicit poteen distiller, Luke's talent is in showing a person as they really are. This collection offers a fascinating insight into day-to-day lifestyle, as well as the cultural and political events, of these years in a country undergoing rapid change. A celebration of the people of Ireland: rural and urban, young and old, famous and unknown.

Starting with a discussion of what makes a portrait particular to one country or region, Fintan Cullen explores the contradictions within existing definitions of national art.

First published in 1975, Donald Akenson's book was at the forefront of a radically new approach to the study of Irish educational history. Instead of investigating the evolution of the schools as an isolated process, he explores the complex interrelations of Irish education, institutions and society, treating the schools as cultural litmus paper. By presenting Ireland's schools as a reflection of the society that produced them, Professor Akenson demonstrates that they are, in truth, "a mirror to the face of Kathleen ni Houlihan".

The classic reference work that provides annually updated information on the countries of the world.