"Short Histories" are hard to write. You can be criticised by virtually all sides: it was very short, it left out something, it was biased towards some specific group, or it gave more attention to culture than to politics, for example. That being said, I was amazed by this book. Ranelagh is a fine writer indeed and he is able to keep it short, interesting, and accurate. And in the case of Ireland, that's a lot! Very fun to read, it is perfect for anyone - if you don't know anything about Ireland or you want to have a condensed history of the Emerald Island. I strongly recommend this one.

Ranelagh does a fantastic job of condensing a couple thousand years of history into a readable couple hundred pages. This book is a first-rate shortened version of Irish history.

At times, one thinks more and deeper connections could have been drawn (such as the resurrection, by twentieth century hunger-strikers, of Brehon Law-era practices like fasting for the redress of grievances) and more discussion fostered on particularly hard-hitting aspects of Ireland's past and present. But this is, after all, a SHORT history, and a remarkable one at that.

There is good coverage of Ireland before the arrival of the English, in a way that touches on both historical developments and cultural ones. Likewise, the era of Cromwell and the disastrous run-up to and aftermath of Black 1847 are given good detail. One comes away feeling a bit as though more recent history (say, 1916 and on) has been slighted, but this feeling is probably just the product of years of weighted emphasis on the twentieth century; Ranelagh does well to bring a historical balance to the overall sweep of Ireland's development into what it is today.

And what it is today is, for Ranelagh, closely invested as well in the question of what England is and no longer is. "A Short History of Ireland" may disturb those who view England as a still-unwelcome visitor into Irish history and culture, but Ranelagh concludes convincingly that the story of Ireland from the 13th century on is intimately related to its evolving relationship with its slightly larger neighbor and one-time persecutor/antagonist. Ranelagh quite usefully and realistically departs from other histories of the Emerald Isle in asserting that the England/Ireland relationship can, for a slew of reasons that he points to, only ever be one of co-dependence.