It's not worth a full review, but suffice it to say that the book was written well enough, I suppose, and even had some humorous moments. Unfortunately, the pacing was completely off - the Potato Famine garnered only some five or six pages out of 579 - and it was too focused on the political, as though somehow the reader knew the basic outline of the history to begin with. The name Boycott was mentioned, but just who he was or what he did to become a byword for the process we now call "boycotting" wasn't explained (I had to use wikipedia, on that occasion as on many others). The author referred to a "land war" in the late Nineteenth Century, but failed to really explain it adequately. On the flip side, the political maneuverings of a completely impotent and useless Irish Parliament prior to the Act of Union in 1800 took up something like sixty pages. It was frustrating and dissatisfying. I retract my earlier statement that Irish history is boring; THIS Irish history was boring (for reference, it is called Ireland: A History, by Thomas Bartlett). I caught glimpses of interesting things happening and mentioned in passing, just barely, through a lens and darkly. I suspect that a well-written book by an author with the storytelling skills of a Massie, Wedgwood or Shorto would completely change my opinion.