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  • We Don't Know Ourselves

  • A Personal History of Modern Ireland
  • Auteur(s): Fintan O'Toole
  • Narrateur(s): Aidan Kelly
  • Durée: 22 h et 11 min
  • 4,9 out of 5 stars (13 évaluations)

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We Don't Know Ourselves

Auteur(s): Fintan O'Toole
Narrateur(s): Aidan Kelly
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Description

In We Don't Know Ourselves, Fintan O'Toole weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary "backwater" to an almost totally open society - perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history.

Born to a working-class family in the Dublin suburbs, O'Toole served as an altar boy and attended a Christian Brothers school. He was enthralled by American Westerns suddenly appearing on Irish television, which were not that far from his own experience, given that Ireland's main export was beef and it was still not unknown for herds of cattle to clatter down Dublin's streets. Yet the Westerns were a sign of what was to come. 

O'Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish, women in particular. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism. In O'Toole's telling, America became a lodestar, from John F. Kennedy's 1963 visit, when the American president was welcomed as a native son, to the emergence of the Irish technology sector in the late 1990s, driven by American corporations, which set Ireland on the path toward particular disaster during the 2008 financial crisis.

©2021 Fintan O'Toole (P)2022 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Ce que les auditeurs disent de We Don't Know Ourselves

Moyenne des évaluations de clients
Au global
  • 5 out of 5 stars
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  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Ireland - a love hate relationship

Fintan O’Toole has perfectly explained what for so long I have found hard to articulate. How on one hand I can be happy and proud to be Irish and on the other I am happy to have got the hell out of there. He explores the tensions that exist in Ireland and us Irish between the known and the unknowns, what is said and unsaid. He has juxtaposed the facade and desires of the elite over the years with what became the known reality - usually not flattering. It was very thought provoking book and overall very enjoyable.

1 personne a trouvé cela utile

  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
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If your parents never left Ireland…

This is more than a modern history of Ireland — it is a telling of the often hidden truth of the church and state of the Republic.
Quite disturbing in places it exposes the sheer duplicity of those in power and the rise of an educated class to throw off the bonds of ignorance. A fascinating read.

  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Truly excellent

This writer may be the finest journalist today. I followed his columns when I visited Dublin. I have always been fascinated by the turn to modernity in the Ireland of the last decade. This book puts all the history together in a cogent and beautifully written story

  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating!

A beautifully written account of modern Irish history from a particularly personal perspective. Both educational and highly entertaining. Fintan O’Toole writes like a prince.

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  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
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  • Jim Dunn
  • 2022-03-22

Brilliant. Pure pleasure.

Rarely have I ever encountered such a thoroughly articulated sense of time and place. Speaking from life experience — and with a startling number of firsthand interactions with key figures — the author lays out a complex, convincing portrait of the world he was born into and how it has changed in his life. It reeks of truth. It conveys complex yet compelling insights any of us would long to convey about our own experience. The best history I’ve read in ages. And the performance is first rate — this was pure pleasure.

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  • Au global
    4 out of 5 stars
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  • Aaron
  • 2022-06-17

It was hard to finish

it is extremely well written and informative, but can be dry, overwelming, and overly negative at times. Names of people, places, and events are constantly being introduced at such a rapid pace that you get lost; not to mention it jumps from year to year frequently, meaning that, even though the chapter is in 2008, he's talking about something that happened 80s. I also had the problem of asking "is Ireland getting any better yet? no? Ok." and I start to tune out a bit. despite this, I genuinely feel like I have learned about Ireland; things I never knew or didn't realize. I'm grateful for this book. it's demystified the emerald Isle for me and made me appreciate it for the country it is in the modern day.

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  • Au global
    2 out of 5 stars
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  • John
  • 2022-06-02

Relentlessly Negative

If you despise Ireland this the book for you. O'Toole takes the occasion of this book to hang all his enemies. And his enemies are legion. They crowd off his pages any glimmer of a good person, a worthy deed, or a cultural achievement. Listening to half a dozen of Sienad O’Connor's self-congratulatory screeds against her fellows will give you the whole gist of this author's protracted slouching toward whatever ditch he wants to bury Ireland in. He admires nothing. He is always on the attack. Even the rise of Country music in the Irish seventies is an example of the people as fools, institutions are demonic, and innovation as orchestrated by predators. Perhaps the crowning instance of otoole's malevolence comes when he rants against the substitution of horizontal for vertical windows in new built houses, a sign of people too dumb to know which way is up. (No joke here. I’m not kidding.). I kept going until the end of the book, driven by a lurid fascination with seeing if otoole would keep slouching. He never disappointed.

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  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
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  • Frank Salomon
  • 2022-04-15

Emerald optimism and its lumps

Here's an interesting idea: Catholicism played the same role in Ireland that Communism played in Russia, and its dominance crumbled for similar reasons. O'Toole takes us along the the path of his own life somewhat as a hiker guides one along a towpath; the big barges of history travel alongside his own ambling way to manhood.

He is enraged at the massive child abuse and sectarian bloodshed that shamed Ireland during his first decades, Yet at the same time O'Toole remains a calm, amiable, and candid talker. He brings us close to the Irish at the time when they got infatuated with American styles, yet remained hard for Americans to understand. I just like the guy.

The book has a couple of chapters that might seem chewy to readers who haven't followed Irish news. But to make up for that, the book is at last happily free from the booze-and-blarney atmosphere that still dominates almost all internationally published Irish fiction. It's clear, bright, and innovative.

8 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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  • Mairead McKenna
  • 2022-03-25

Loving it

So far I am loving this book. I am a first generation Irish catholic with staunch nationalist family, so hearing a different but not entirely oppositional Account of modern Irish history.

7 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

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    5 out of 5 stars
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  • Martin J Dunleavy
  • 2022-03-28

Best book I have read on modern Ireland south & northwest

Totally enjoyable and very informative view of Ireland northwest and south since the 50s. I devour books on our own history literature culture. And I found this books approach to be totally fascinating enjoyable. Weaving so much information in and out in both the topical and chronological order. Additionally, O’Toole is just a wonderful writer a true wordsmith. You may not agree with everything he says but overall fascinating view of Ireland over the last seven years

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    5 out of 5 stars
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  • Kindle Customer
  • 2022-09-15

A beautifully written and compellingly told story

This history weaves personal memories and experiences with shocking details of Ireland's turbulent journey since 1958. The author spares no one of the many people most responsible for the corruption of the church and state so eloquently documented here. And the perfect match of the reader's voice and accent makes this an exceptionally enlightening, and enjoyable, experience.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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  • Dave
  • 2022-09-14

...Or Do They?

I subscribe to The Irish Times because of Fintan. This book covers the gap between the Civil War and the Celtic Tiger most historians avoid. The story about Bill Clinton and The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers alone is worth the purchase.

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  • Citizen 90028
  • 2022-08-31

History that is alive, accurate and readable

Fintan O’Toole is a very good writer—a pleasure to read. Every page is alive. This book tells the story of Ireland in the Post WW2 period up to 2018. It is social, political and cultural history well told. Highly recommended.

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  • Kevin O'Brien
  • 2022-09-06

brilliant overview of journey of modern Ireland

We Don't Know Ourselves is a stunning achievement. It melds a superb command of the nuances and complexities of the journey of modern Ireland with a first-rate gift for narrative--melding meticulous research with engaging personal stories, unparalleled command of data with gripping biographical accounts. O'Toole's genius for marshalling a vast array of detail is matched by an exceptional way with words.

One of the best non-fictional books I've ever read. A masterpiece.

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