cover image Modern Ireland: 21600-1972

Modern Ireland: 21600-1972

R. F. Foster. Penguin Books, $15.95 (704pp) ISBN 978-0-14-012510-8

In what PW described as an ``engaging revisionist chronicle,'' the author traces Irish history from 1600, when the country had a subsistence economy and was home to a welter of peoples, each of whom defined their ``Irishness'' differently, to the 1970s, when Ireland--despite three centuries of conquest and fissure--was a country with a powerful identity. (Mar.)