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We Don't Know Ourselves
- A Personal History of Modern Ireland
- Narrated by: Aidan Kelly
- Length: 22 hrs and 11 mins
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We Don't Know Ourselves
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Summary
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.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 21-10-22
Accurate account.
Captivating history of our most recent captivity. Thanks Fintan for an excellent recount. If ever there was a book where the devil in the detail was most apt.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- miko
- 23-02-24
Very impartial and poignant review of irish history from 1958
Mr O'Toole presents almost 70 years of Irish history with the utmost impartiality. He is ruthlessly honest and presents the awful parts of recent Irish with the better parts. This is an excellent book.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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- World Traveller
- 27-07-22
Engaging but one-dimensional
Lively anecdotes from his childhood give a vivid picture of Ireland as it transformed from a poor, isolated country of emigration into the fastest-growing economy in Europe but don't expect to understand the forces driving this transformation.
O’Toole is in his element when he is condemning Fianna Fáil, above all CJ Haughey, and the Irish Catholic Church, epitomised by Archbishop McQuaid, but he doesn’t offer any explanation for the extraordinary transformation of Irish life in all its dimensions - social, political, economic, religious and cultural, to mention those of particular interest to O'Toole.
O'Toole does not address fundamental, prior questions. How did Fianna Fail become the most successful party in the history of liberal democracy? They topped the poll in every national, European and local election from 1932 to 2011. Haughey was their leader for only a dozen years in the middle of those eight decades. And similarly, how did the Catholic Church exercise such extraordinary control when it was not an established State Church? It did control most schools and hospitals but it had no monopoly in either field.
O'Toole is no help on these issues. I suspect his explanation would lean heavily on the idea of "hegemony", that shibboleth of all failed socialists. And that still leaves the most interesting question - how did the Catholic Church lose its power so rapidly and (it seems) irredemably? The various scandals of the 1990s were the proximate cause but these scandals (especially the Magdalene Laundries and the Industrial Schools) had been "hiding in plain sight" for many decades, as O'Toole correctly notes.
He, like the rest of the Irish media, has a ready explanation for the end of Fianna Fail's electoral dominance - the banking/property crisis of 2008. But was it this crisis or was it the subsequent fiscal measures which lead to their electoral defeat? If the latter, was Fianna Fail punished for doing the right thing or were they left holding the baby by the ECB? Answers on a postcard please to Yannis Varofakis c/o the Greek Parliament, Athens.
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