Fourth revised edition.

Everyone knows that St. Patrick drove the snakes from Irish soil, that Dean Swift's "A Modest Proposal," on the sufferings of the Irish people in the age of Queen Anne, is one of the masterpieces of satire on governmental stupidity and cruelty, that the Irish are a great race of fighters and poets and singers and saints, that Tristan's Isolde came from Ireland, that Deirdre of the Sorrows was a great legendary beauty and heroine, that somewhere along the line there were Irish heroes named Finn McCool, Cuchullain, Brian Boru, and Wolfe Tone, and that from time immemorial the Irish and English have been at loggerheads and still are.  But the average well-read American knows little more of the great history of the Irish people -- a history too important to ignore and a chronicle too fascinating to miss.
In The Story of the Irish Race Seamas McManus presents the whole saga of the Irish from the earliest times to our own.  It is at once a work of sound scholarship and as easy to read as a superb novel, for it is beautifully written.  McManus gives not only facts and dates and names, but a real sense of the mind and temperament of a people, their ways of life, ideals, and an understanding account of their culture -- the vitally important matters the merely-academic historians overlook or glance at all too quickly.
The Story of the Irish Race is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand the Irish people -- their political struggle, their magnificent literature, and their whole great contribution to Western Civilization, a contribution amazing in its richness and variety.