Fintan O Toole: 5 books

A provocative new biography of the man who forged America's alliance with the Iroquois William Johnson was scarcely more than a boy when he left Ireland and his Gaelic, Catholic family to become a Protestant in the service of Britain's North American empire. In New York by 1738, Johnson moved...

'A wildly entertaining but uncomfortable read ... Pitilessly brilliant' JONATHAN COE. 'There will not be much political writing in this or any other year that is carried off with such style' The Times. A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR. 'A quite brilliant dissection of the cultural roots of the...

The death of the Celtic tiger is not an extinction event to trouble naturalists. There was, in fact nothing natural about this tiger, if it ever really existed. The "Irish Economic miracle" was built on good old-fashioned subsidies (from the European Union) and the simple fact that until...

In this important book, historians, lawyers, economists and writers come together to put a coherent case: that although the Irish economic collapse has resulted in national humiliation, renewed emigration and a decline in living standards for the majority of the population, there is still hope that...

The Republic of Ireland, which declared itself in 1949, allowed the Catholic Church to dominate its civil society and education system. Investment by American and European companies, and a welcoming tax regime, created the 'Celtic Tiger' of the 1990s. That brief burst of good fortune was destroyed...