Karl S. Bottigheimer is Professor of History and Director of the Graduate History Program at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.

This book tells the story of Ireland as well as it can be told, on the basis of up-to-date research, within the limits of three hundred pages...There is not liley to be a better balanced and better written coverage of the substance of Irish history for many years.This book tells the story of Ireland as well as it can be told, on the basis of up-to-date research, within the limits of three hundred pages...There is not likely to be a better balanced and better written coverage of the substance of Irish history for many years. American Historical Review

• 1. The Insular Condition and Early Habitation 2. A Heroic Age: The Celtic, Viking, and Norman Inheritance 3. Late Medieval Ireland and the Tudor Conquest 4. The Making of the Protestant Ascendancy: The Seventeenth Century 5. Ireland as a Protestant "Nation": The Eighteenth Century 6. Catholic Ireland Resurgent: The Nineteenth Century 7. A New State Established: Triumphs and Dilemmas 8. The Irish Abroad: Examples and Conclusions 9. Literature and the Irish