Book Review: A Traveller’s History of Ireland
Book: A Traveller’s History of Ireland by Peter Neville
Genre: History
Publisher: Interlink Books
Publication date: 2007
Pages: 278
Source: Library
Summary: Covering Neolithic prehistory to the Celtic Tiger, A Traveller’s History of Ireland by Peter Neville provides a short history of Ireland.
Thoughts: Ireland is a very old country with a very long history. Trying to write a short history is a difficult challenge. I didn’t come away with as coherent of an understanding as I hoped, but it might be impossible. Part of the problem, though, was the author seemed to be arguing with other historians in this book — not that helpful for the reader who doesn’t already know the history of Ireland. Given the title, I expected more of a tie-in between contemporary tourist sites and the stories in the book. It helped me as a tourist to have this overview, but it wasn’t a direct link between the places I saw and their stories.
Appeal: This is the best book I found for a quick history of Ireland before a trip.
Challenges: A Traveller’s History of Ireland by Peter Neville is Book 4 of 4 of the Ireland Reading Challenge — yay! I’m going to go over on that challenge.
Have you read this book? What did you think?
It is too bad the book wasn’t what you expected, but the cover picture is great. When are you going to Ireland? What a great trip it will be.
We just got back from the trip. I didn’t quite get this finished before the trip, but got it read a few days into it. It was wonderful!
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At some point, I would really like to read a conclusive history of Ireland – something more in depth than this one, I think. Congrats on all the Ireland reading you’ve been doing! I linked all of your latest reviews on the main challenge page.
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