Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles

Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles
Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 672
Release: 2020-10-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0300255810

“The great poems, plays, novels, stories teach us how to go on living. . . . Your own mistakes, accidents, failures at otherness beat you down. Rise up at dawn and read something that matters as soon as you can.” So Harold Bloom, the most famous literary critic of his generation, exhorts readers of his last book: one that praises the sustaining power of poetry. "Passionate. . . . Perhaps Bloom’s most personal work, this is a fitting last testament to one of America’s leading twentieth-century literary minds."—Publishers Weekly “An extraordinary testimony to a long life spent in the company of poetry and an affecting last declaration of [Bloom's] passionate and deeply unfashionable faith in the capacity of the imagination to make the world feel habitable”—Seamus Perry, Literary Review "Reading, this stirring collection testifies, ‘helps in staying alive.’“—Kirkus Reviews, starred review This dazzling celebration of the power of poetry to sublimate death—completed weeks before Harold Bloom died—shows how literature renews life amid what Milton called “a universe of death.” Bloom reads as a way of taking arms against the sea of life’s troubles, taking readers on a grand tour of the poetic voices that have haunted him through a lifetime of reading. “High literature,” he writes, “is a saving lie against time, loss of individuality, premature death.” In passages of breathtaking intimacy, we see him awake late at night, reciting lines from Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Montaigne, Blake, Wordsworth, Hart Crane, Jay Wright, and many others. He feels himself “edged by nothingness,” uncomprehending, but still sustained by reading. Generous and clear‑eyed, this is among Harold Bloom’s most ambitious and most moving books.

The Trouble with Guns

The Trouble with Guns
Author: Malachi O'Doherty
Publisher:
Total Pages: 238
Release: 1998
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

O'Doherty was immediately averse to supporting the IRA and felt, at the beginning of the Troubles, a loss of moral bearings, when both the state and the insurgents were in murderous form

Personal Accounts From Northern Ireland's Troubles

Personal Accounts From Northern Ireland's Troubles
Author: Marie Smyth
Publisher: Pluto Press
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2000-04-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780745316185

Fresh look at Kurdistan Iraq today, including the role of central government and international forces, and the region's political and economic future.

The Arms Trial

The Arms Trial
Author: Justin O'Brien
Publisher: Gill
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2000
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

In 1970 cabinet ministers, Neil Blaney and Charles Haughey, were dismissed by the Taoiseach, for allegedly using government money to import arms for the fledgling IRA. This book charts the linkages between the struggle for power within the Fianna Fail cabinet and events on the streets of Ulster.

A Secret History of the IRA

A Secret History of the IRA
Author: Ed Moloney
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 644
Release: 2002
Genre: Ireland
ISBN: 9780393325027

A portrayal of the Irish Republican Army includes coverage of its associations with Qaddafi's regime, Margaret Thatcher's secret diplomacy with Gerry Adams, and the Catholic Church's negotiations with Republican leadership.

Northern Spy

Northern Spy
Author: Flynn Berry
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2022-04-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 073522501X

Reese’s Book Club Pick Instant New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Book Review Top 10 Thriller of 2021 A Washington Post Top 10 Thriller or Mystery of 2021 “If you love a mystery, then you’ll devour [Northern Spy] . . . I loved this thrill ride of a book.” —Reese Witherspoon “A chilling, gorgeously written tale . . . Berry keeps the tension almost unbearably high.” —The New York Times Book Review The acclaimed author of Under the Harrow and A Double Life returns with her most riveting novel to date: the story of two sisters who become entangled with the IRA A producer at the BBC and mother to a new baby, Tessa is at work in Belfast one day when the news of another raid comes on the air. The IRA may have gone underground in the two decades since the Good Friday Agreement, but they never really went away, and lately bomb threats, security checkpoints, and helicopters floating ominously over the city have become features of everyday life. As the news reporter requests the public's help in locating those responsible for the robbery, security footage reveals Tessa's sister, Marian, pulling a black ski mask over her face. The police believe Marian has joined the IRA, but Tessa is convinced she must have been abducted or coerced; the sisters have always opposed the violence enacted in the name of uniting Ireland. And besides, Marian is vacationing on the north coast. Tessa just spoke to her yesterday. When the truth about Marian comes to light, Tessa is faced with impossible choices that will test the limits of her ideals, the bonds of her family, her notions of right and wrong, and her identity as a sister and a mother. Walking an increasingly perilous road, she wants nothing more than to protect the one person she loves more fiercely than her sister: her infant son, Finn. Riveting, atmospheric, and exquisitely written, Northern Spy is at once a heart-pounding story of the contemporary IRA and a moving portrait of sister- and motherhood, and of life in a deeply divided society.

IRA, The Bombs and the Bullets

IRA, The Bombs and the Bullets
Author: A. R. Oppenheimer
Publisher: Irish Academic Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2008-10-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1788550188

In this groundbreaking title, A. R. Oppenheimer tells how the Irish Republican Army became the most adept and experienced insurgency group the world has ever seen through their bombing expertise – and how, after generations of conflict, it all came to an end. The book is a comprehensive account of more than 150 years of Irish republican strategic, tactical, and operational details, and an analysis of the IRA’s mission, doctrine, targeting, and acquisition of weapons and explosives. As a leading expert on non-conventional weapons and explosives, Oppenheimer vividly presents the story behind the bombs – those who built and deployed them; those who had to deal with and dismantle them; and those who suffered or died from them. He analyses where, how, and why the IRA’s 19,000 bombs were built, targeted and deployed, and explores what the IRA was hoping to accomplish in its unrivaled campaign of violence and insurgency through covert acquisition, training, intelligence and counter-intelligence. Beginning with the Fenian ‘Dynamiters’ in the second half of the nineteenth century, Oppenheimer fully describes and assesses the impact of the pre-1970s bombing campaigns in Northern Ireland and England and the evolution of strategies and tactics during the Troubles. He concludes with the decommissioning of an arsenal big enough to arm several battalions – which included an entire home-crafted missile system, an unsurpassed range of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and enough explosives to blow up several urban centres. The author scrutinises the level of deadly improvisation that became the hallmark of the Provisional IRA’s expertise and the ingenuity in its pioneering IED timing, delay and disguise technologies, and follows the arms race it carried on with the British Army and security services in a long war of mutual assured disruption. He also provides an insight into the bombing equipment and guns in the vast IRA inventory held at Irish Police HQ in Dublin.

Russia and the Arms Trade

Russia and the Arms Trade
Author: Ian Anthony
Publisher:
Total Pages: 328
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN:

For this study, a group of Russian authors were commissioned to describe and assess the arms trade policies and practices of Russia under new domestic and international conditions. The contributors, drawn from the government, industry, and academic communities, offer a wide range of reports on the political, military, economic, and industrial implications of Russian arms transfers, as well as specific case studies of key bilateral arms transfer relationships.