Ireland

Below you'll find 1) top picks, 2) biographies, 3) party politics, 4) Irish Republican Army, 5) women in politics, 6) economic history and political economy, 7) further readings.

Top Picks:

• Gráda, Cormac Ó. 2020. Black ’47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and Memory. Princeton University Press.

• Ferriter, Diarmaid. 2010b. The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000. Profile Books. 

• Ferriter, Diarmaid. 2010a. Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland. Profile Books. 

• Lee, Joseph. 1989. Ireland, 1912-1985: Politics and Society. Cambridge University Press.

• Johnston, Kevin. 2010. Home Or Away: The Great War and the Irish Revolution. Gill & Macmillan.

• Moore, Aoife. 2025. The Long Game: Inside Sinn Féin. Penguin.

• Riain, Seán Ó. 2014. The Rise and Fall of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger: Liberalism, Boom and Bust. Cambridge University Press.

• Montaño, John Patrick. 2011. The Roots of English Colonialism in Ireland. Cambridge University Press. 

• Finn, Daniel. 2017. “Irish Politics Since The Crash.” Catalyst: A Journal of Theory & Strategy (Summer). 

Biographies

• Doherty, Gabriel, and Dermot Keogh. 2006. Michael Collins and the Making of the Irish State. Mercier Press Ltd.

• Dolan, Anne, and William Murphy. 2018. Michael Collins: The Man and the Revolution. Gill & Macmillan Ltd.

• Hughes, Brian. 2016. Eoin MacNeill: Memoir of a Revolutionary Scholar. Irish Manuscripts Commission Dublin. 

• Savage, Robert J. 1999. Seán Lemass. Historical Association of Ireland.

• Lyons, F. S. L. 2005. Charles Stewart Parnell, A Biography: The Definitive Biography of the Uncrowned King of Ireland. Gill & Macmillan Ltd.

• Mulvagh, Conor, and Emer Purcell. 2022. Eoin MacNeill: The Pen and the Sword. Cork University Press.

• Fanning, Ronan. 2015. Éamon de Valera: A Will to Power. Faber & Faber.

• Gordon, David. 2009. The Fall of the House of Paisley: The Downfall of Ian Paisley’s Political Dynasty. Gill & Macmillan Ltd.

• Moloney, Ed. 2010. Voices from the Grave: Two Men’s War in Ireland. PublicAffairs.

• Connolly, James. 2018. A James Connolly Reader. Haymarket Books.

• O’Toole, Fintan. 2022. We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland. Liveright Publishing.

Party Politics

• Dunphy, Richard. 1995. The Making of Fianna Fáil Power in Ireland 1923–1948. Oxford University Press. 

• Coakley, John, Michael Gallagher, Eoin O’Malley, and Theresa Reidy. 2023. Politics in the Republic of Ireland. Taylor & Francis.

• Broin, Eoin Ó. 2009. Sinn Féin and The Politics of Left Republicanism. Pluto Press.

• McGraw, Sean D., and Eoin O’Malley. 2017. One Party Dominance: Fianna Fáil and Irish Politics 1926-2016. Routledge.

• Moore, Aoife. 2025. The Long Game: Inside Sinn Féin. Penguin.

• Collins, Stephen, and Ciara Meehan. 2020. Saving the State: Fine Gael from Collins to Varadkar. Gill & Macmillan Ltd.

• Gallagher, Michael. 1985. Political Parties in the Republic of Ireland. Manchester University Press.

• McGraw, Sean. 2016. “Ideological Flexibility and Electoral Success: An Analysis of Irish Party Competition.” Irish Political Studies 31(4): 461–82.

• McGraw, Sean D. 2015. How Parties Win: Shaping the Irish Political Arena. University of Michigan Press. 

The Irish Republican Army (IRA)

• Cadwallader, Anne. 2013. Lethal Allies: British Collusion in Ireland. Mercier Press Ltd. 

• English, Richard. 2008. Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA. Pan Macmillan.

• Ferriter, Diarmaid. 2021. Between Two Hells: The Irish Civil War. Profile Books. 

• Finn, Daniel. 2019. One Man’s Terrorist: A Political History of the IRA. Verso Books.

• Wilk, Gavin. 2014. “Transatlantic Defiance: The Militant Irish Republican Movement in America, 1923–45.” In Transatlantic Defiance, Manchester University Press. 

• Irvin, Cynthia L. 1999. 9 Militant Nationalism: Between Movement and Party in Ireland and the Basque Country. U of Minnesota Press. 

• Krause, Peter. 2017. Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win. Cornell University Press. [just chapter 6]

Women in Politics

• Matthews, Ann. 2010. Renegades: Irish Republican Women 1900-1922. Mercier Press Ltd.

• O’Dowd, Mary. 2016. A History of Women in Ireland, 1500-1800. Routledge.

• Matthews, Ann. 2012. Dissidents: Irish Republican Women 1923-1941. Mercier Press Ltd.

• Ferriter, Diarmaid. 2008. “Women and Political Change in Ireland since 1960.” Éire-Ireland 43(1): 179–204.

Economic History and Political Economy

• Allen, Kieran. 2010. “The Trade Unions: From Partnership to Crisis.” Irish Journal of Sociology 18(2): 22–37.

• Fanning, Bryan. 2021. Migration and the Making of Ireland. Indiana University Press.

• Gráda, Ó. 1995. Ireland: A New Economic History 1780–1939. Oxford University Press. Howe, Stephen. 2008. “Questioning the (Bad) Question:‘Was Ireland a Colony?’” Irish Historical Studies 36(142): 138–52.

• Kennedy, Robert E. 1973. The Irish; Emigration, Marriage, and Fertility. Univ of California Press. 

• O’Hearn, Denis. 2008. “How Has Peace Changed the Northern Irish Political Economy?” Ethnopolitics 7(1): 101–18. 

• O’Toole, Fintan. 2010. Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger. PublicAffairs.

• Wren, Maev-Ann. 2003. Unhealthy State: Anatomy of a Sick Society. New Island.

• O’Sullivan, Kenneth PV, and Tom Kennedy. 2010. “What Caused the Irish Banking Crisis?” Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance 18(3): 224–42.

Further Readings

• Lustick, Ian S. 1990. “Becoming Problematic: Breakdown of a Hegemonic Conception of Ireland in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” Politics & Society 18(1): 39–73. 

• Murphy, Mary C. 2019. “The Brexit Crisis, Ireland and British–Irish Relations: Europeanisation and/or de-Europeanisation?” Irish Political Studies 34(4): 530–50. 

• O’Leary, Brendan, and John McGarry. 2016. The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland. Bloomsbury Academic.

• Shirlow, Peter, and Brendan Murtagh. 2006. Belfast: Segregation, Violence and the City. Pluto Press.

• Daltun, Eoghan. 2024. The Magic of an Irish Rainforest: A Visual Journey. Hachette Books Ireland.

• Ferriter, Diarmaid. 2019. The Border: The Legacy of a Century of Anglo-Irish Politics. Profile Books.

• Eagleton, Terry. 1995. Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture. Verso.

• O’Toole, Fintan. 1997. The Lie of the Land: Irish Identities. Verso.

• Anything from the New History of Ireland book series.