Seems surprising that an Englishman and an Australian have written the first history of Ireland's national day! No offence guys - I really like your book. Cronin and Adair are academics, so this is a serious and wide-ranging study. It looks at the rise of the legend of St Patrick, commemoration of the 17th of March in Ireland, and its export with Irish migrants to England, USA, Canada, and Australia. The book raises important questions about the politics of celebrating "Irishness", particularly at key moments of tension in Irish history, such as the 1916 rebellion and the 1970s Troubles. But it is also a tale of mirth and joy, for St Patrick's Day has always been an occasion for merriment and good cheer. Some of the stories will leave you laughing and scratching your head. For example, an Arab troupe once marched in a Montreal parade and won first prize for best entrant. Today the St Pat's festival in Dublin is a HUGE event, which, as Cronin and Adair explain, emerged directly out of Dublin Tourism. St Patrick is still there somewhere, midst the craic and booze. This is a big book, but it has sections about St Pat's Day in different parts of the world at different times. So you can either read the whole thing or pick and choose the bits you fancy. As for me, this book has helped me to understand why St Pat's Day is such a big deal. And it has helped me to appreciate the history of the Irish wherever they have migrated.

I was sent this as a gift ready for St Patrick's Day, and to be honest wasn't sure that there was much to know about 17th March. But wait, this book rocks. It's great, full of anicdotes, reads really well, and kept me full of stories for my Irish friends for days. If you do nothing else this St Patrick's Day, grab a Guinness, put your feet up and read this book. Once you've read this you'll realise that, sure, it's a darlin day to be Irish!

An impressive compendium of superb recipes, Adirondack Cuisine is enhanced with wonderful color photography showcasing some of the finished dishes, as well b/w illustrations of the countryside that inspired them. From Wild Buckwheat Honey-Roasted Chicken with Apple & Shiitake Mushroom Stuffing; Thendara Pepper-Crusted Filet with Cognac-Merlot Sauce; High Peaks Chamboard & Blackberry Mousse; and Redskin Irish Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes with Asparagus & Corned Beef Morsels; to Trappers Pan-Seared Steak over Russet Potato & Lobster Hash with Lobster Claw-Scallion Butter; Royal Blackberry Scones with Ruby Port-Plum Butter; Mascarpone-Stuffed Poached Pears; and Grilled Breast of Duck with Maple & Currant Demi-Glaze, Adirondack Cuisine showcases a mouth-watering wealth of wonderful recipes that would satisfy any appetite and please any palate.

Kurt Vonnegut creates an intricate and creative story of science fiction while still writing an anti-war novel. " Slaughterhouse-Five " focuses on an incredibly silly character named Billy Pilgrim. After a series of tragic events, aliens called Tralfamadorians abduct Pilgrim. These aliens have the ability to travel to any moment in time whenever they wish. They teach Pilgrim how to travel through time and we find him constantly traveling back and forth through his own life at random. We find Pilgrim one moment reliving the firebombing of Dresden and on the very next page teeing off at a country club ten years later. Incidents exactly like this can be found adorned through the book along with Vonnegut's distinct wit and black humor. One of the stronger points in the book deals with free will and predestination. Billy Pilgrim and the aliens believe that everyone's life is set in stone and everything that we do was destined to happen. One Tralfamadorian tells Pilgrim, I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will." If such a thing were true then obviously the notion of free will is nothing more than human imagination used to fool ourselves. Thought provoking subjects such as this grab the reader's attention and never lets go. Although the writing style is a bit strange and takes time to get used to, Vonnegut manages to weave an intricately detailed world of laughter, war horrors, and moral issues. Slaughterhouse-Five is a truly creative and incredibly entertaining read which comes highly recommended.

In the tradition of Vonnegut's works, _Slaughterhouse Five_ is part autobiography, part fiction. Recounting the author's World War 2 experience, the story is told through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim, a timid and hopelessly ill-equipped army private. As our docile hero is dragged along behind his fellow soldiers on their pilgrimage across the war-scarred German countryside, the reader is sent chronologically back and forth (in a manner not unlike Vonnegut's later novel _Timequake_) to experience snatches of Pilgrim's childhood, his old age, and his captivity on the alien planet of Tralfamadore.

While a morbid Roland Weary rambles on about blood gutters and iron maidens, Billy's mind flees from the POW camp near Dresden and finds itself in it's host's future body, reclining in the nude under the protective dome of a Tralfamadorian zoo. From outside the cupola, plunger-shaped creatures scrutinizingly observe his every move. The bizarre extraterrestrials, oblivious to the concept of time, bestow Billy Pilgrim with the following information (which Vonnegut appears to have borrowed from Quantum Physics):

"All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever."

Yet despite his daughter's suspicions, Pilgrim has not lost his mind - and neither has Vonnegut, who, by using this surreal allegory, issues a welcome reminder of the mental detachedness that is rendered by the atrocity called war.

I reread this in one sitting the other night as I have periodically for some 20 years. Slaughterhouse-Five was the first book to really make me think as a young teenager. After all that time and at least six or seven reads I still laugh out loud at jokes I can see coming for pages, and I'm still moved for days or weeks after. Billy Pilgrim's innocence and sadness and Vonnegut's humanity are still astonishingly pure and beautiful.

Don't let the fragmented timeline of Billy's tale put anybody off; it's there to juxtapose disconnected events and thereby create illustrations that are creative and funny and satirical and moving. When available fictional devices cannot make his point, Vonngut puts one or another fantastic tale in the pen of alter ego Kilgore Trout, or brings in the Tralfamadorians for a few life lessons.

Vonnegut is an unparalleled storyteller with a style that is at once easy and deep, like a wonderful aunt or uncle with biting humor and years of wisdom quietly regaling late into the evening. The tale he tells in Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the great stories of all time for it's unbelievable creativity and it's quiet, gentle and powerful sense of humanity. A masterpiece.