{"product_id":"we-dont-know-ourselves-a-personal-history-of-modern-ireland","title":"We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland","description":"\u003cdiv data-a-expander-name=\"book_description_expander\" data-a-expander-collapsed-height=\"280\" class=\"a-expander-collapsed-height a-row a-expander-container a-spacing-base a-expander-partial-collapse-container\" style=\"max-height: none; height: 280px;\"\u003e \u003cdiv data-expanded=\"false\" class=\"a-expander-content a-expander-partial-collapse-content\" style=\"padding-bottom: 20px;\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eNEW YORK TIMES\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e BESTSELLER\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eNEW YORK TIMES\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e • 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR\u003cbr\u003e NATIONAL BESTSELLER\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e: 10 Best Books of 2022\u003cbr\u003e Best Books of the Year: \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eWashington Post, New Yorker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eSalon, Foreign Affairs, New Statesman\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e, Chicago Public Library, Vroman's\u003cbr\u003e “[L]ike reading a great tragicomic Irish novel.” ―James Wood, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Masterful . . . astonishing.” ―Cullen Murphy, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"A landmark history . . . Leavened by the brilliance of O'Toole's insights and wit.” ―Claire Messud, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eHarper’s\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Winner • 2021 An Post Irish Book Award ― Nonfiction Book of the Year • from the judges: “The most remarkable Irish nonfiction book I’ve read in the last 10 years”; “[A] book for the ages.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A celebrated Irish writer’s magisterial, brilliantly insightful chronicle of the wrenching transformations that dragged his homeland into the modern world.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFintan O’Toole was born in the year the revolution began. It was 1958, and the Irish government―in despair, because all the young people were leaving―opened the country to foreign investment and popular culture. So began a decades-long, ongoing experiment with Irish national identity. In \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eWe Don’t Know Ourselves\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, O’Toole, one of the Anglophone world’s most consummate stylists, weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary “backwater” to an almost totally open society―perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBorn to a working-class family in the Dublin suburbs, O’Toole served as an altar boy and attended a Christian Brothers school, much as his forebears did. He was enthralled by American Westerns suddenly appearing on Irish television, which were not that far from his own experience, given that Ireland’s main export was beef and it was still not unknown for herds of cattle to clatter down Dublin’s streets. Yet the Westerns were a sign of what was to come. O’Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish, women in particular. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism. In O’Toole’s telling, America became a lodestar, from John F. Kennedy’s 1963 visit, when the soon-to-be martyred American president was welcomed as a native son, to the emergence of the Irish technology sector in the late 1990s, driven by American corporations, which set Ireland on the path toward particular disaster during the 2008 financial crisis.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA remarkably compassionate yet exacting observer, O’Toole in coruscating prose captures the peculiar Irish habit of “deliberate unknowing,” which allowed myths of national greatness to persist even as the foundations were crumbling. Forty years in the making, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eWe Don’t Know Ourselves\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is a landmark work, a memoir and a national history that ultimately reveals how the two modes are entwined for all of us.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003e 16 of illustrations\u003c\/span\u003e  \u003c\/div\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"a-expander-header a-expander-partial-collapse-header\" style=\"opacity: 1; display: block;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"a-expander-content-fade\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"javascript:void(0)\" role=\"button\" data-action=\"a-expander-toggle\" class=\"a-declarative\" data-a-expander-toggle='{\"allowLinkDefault\":true, \"expand_prompt\":\"Read more\", \"collapse_prompt\":\"Read less\"}'\u003e\u003ci class=\"a-icon a-icon-extender-expand\"\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-expander-prompt\"\u003eRead more\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Liveright Publishing Corporation","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50548231897373,"sku":"9781324092872","price":14.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0901\/5692\/5213\/files\/9781324092872.jpg?v=1761676387","url":"https:\/\/bookdelico.com\/products\/we-dont-know-ourselves-a-personal-history-of-modern-ireland","provider":"Book Delico ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}