Desmond MacNamara

Thiscurious new novel is closely fitted to the bare bones knowledge of the actuality of the life of a world-famous mathematician and physicist, and for some years the head of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Dublin: Erwin Schrödinger. For Belton’s work is an odd literary amalgamation: deeply thought with some fine writing at times…

Hope Dies Last is the latest of Studs Terkel’s books on modern social history, following such gems as Hard Times, The Good War,’ and, most recently, Will The Circle Be Unbroken? All these oral histories have been honed rigorously into compulsive readability from extensive interviews with a wide gamut of people, formerly folks who often…

Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams’s latest book on the fragile and fitful Northern Irish peace process is subtitled “Making Peace in Ireland,” and the text is prefaced by a Seamus Heaney poem: History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave But then, once in a lifetime The tide of justice can rise…

As I walked toward my lodging at a respectable widow’s house near the Marino, my thoughts turned to teeth. I lost two molars when visiting the Hyde Park Exhibition in 1851. I blame the Sudan giant, sent by the Khedive of Egypt to decorate his pavilion. Such strong bones: camel meat, I expect. I left…