“There is increasing interest in the achievements of constitutional nationalists who never espoused violence, and of liberals from the unionist tradition who supported reform, and, at times, varieties of home rule,” writes former Taoiseach John Bruton in his preface to John McCarthy’s “Twenty-First Century Ireland: A View from America.”
Bruton said: “I have known and admired John McCarthy for many years. He undertook the, sometimes lonely, task of explaining to Irish America that there is more complexity to the solution of Ireland’s longstanding problems than simply acceding to a demand that the British leave Ireland, and the island be united as one.
“He has shown that British sovereignty in Northern Ireland is more a consequence of divisions and differences of allegiance within Ireland itself, than it is the primary cause of those divisions and differences.”
The Irish Echo columnist and emeritus professor of history at Fordham McCarthy is praised as a “scholarly, passionate insider” by leading historian Dermot Keogh, while the Rev. Vincent Twomey, recommends the book as a “compelling read.” Twomey, professor emeritus of moral theology at Maynooth, says “critical views on contemporary history never fail to stimulate and inform. His perceptive reading of the dramatic events of the past decade invariably surprises.”
McCarthy’s last book was a biography of Kevin O’Higgins, the Irish government minister assassinated in 1927, and he’s the subject of the first the 10 essays in the “History” section (there are 43 in all in this volume). It’s followed by pieces on the First Dail Éireann, the Civil War in Kerry and Conor Cruise O’Brien, and many of the themes flow into the “Politics” section. “America” has essays on William F. Buckley Jr., Irish-American Republicans, and the Catholic Church, while the “Religion” section deals with the church in Ireland. “Economics” looks mainly at the post-Celtic Tiger period, concluding an essay entitled “Ireland is not Greece.”
The book is published by Academica Press, LLC, Box 6072 Cambridge Station, Palo Alto, Calif. 94306, Website: www.academicapress.com. To order, call: 650-329-0685.
