How the Irish Saved Civilization

Rating:
Summary: Readable, clear and illuminating
Review: Cahill uses a relaxed and readable style to picture this fracture point of history. His voice is personal and open, so you're free to accept or reject his personal attitudes which are in plain sight, rather than hidden in some musty scholarly construct. A bright, enjoyable and enlightening work.

Rating:
Summary: A rare send-back
Review: Cahill has exaggerated an historical sidelight (and not a unique one, i.e., a culture with a bibliographic tradition that survived the relative chaos after the fall of Rome) into an overblown rumination on illuminated manuscripts and monks. Plodding and dull, with few surprises for the literate. A disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: Assumes!
Review: Very good history, but the analysis presents a fictitious schismatic Celtic Church and beats the heck out of great thinker and saint, St. Augustine. Cahill brings his disagreements with the Roman Catholic Church to 5th century Ireland.

Rating:
Summary: Historically Inaccurate and Very Misleading
Review: It's premise and it's title are false. It grossly overstates the disorder on the Continent at the time and grossly overstates the accomplishments of the Irish monks. One of the most rubbishy history books I've ever come across.

Rating:
Summary: Were all history texts like this, we'd not fear the future
Review: Gentle reader, put on the kettle and warm the teapot. Fine time tha' wit and heart were warmed as well/ by the truth that within our blood does dwell/ a thirst for knowledge canst no' be quenched/ by oppressor's rod nor religion's fence;/ answers the somber beckonings/ of a lost soul's wayward reckonings/ at last laid bare in this tome of time,/ poor homage paid it by this cuff-link rhyme!

Rating:
Summary: fun and interesting
Review: This book really gave me a feel for WHY the Irish of the time saved so much of western literature when the rest of Europe lost it. Showing the different world views and the behaviors that came from them was what I found most interesting. The book is an easy read while having something to say.

Rating:
Summary: Funny, witty and very serious!
Review: One of the best books I have read in a long long time. It is funny and witty, a fast read.... Can't put it down! and it is serious and historically correct. It describes a forgotten corner of history that is the cornerstone of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Long live the Irish, and a pity the catholic church did not learn more from them! The world might have been a better place!

Rating:
Summary: Anyone going to Ireland soon,will get their excitement going
Review: What a excellent book! After each chapter I read, I read it again! I am going to Ireland this summer and I'm so excited!! The people and ideologies are fascinating! It's such an enlighting piece on the Irish that makes it fun for anyone looking to discover who the Irish are, and why we CELEBRATE ST. PATRICK's the way we do!!

Rating:
Summary: Too good for these eyes to read deservingly!!
Review: This book is a great book for any who is Irish (and Catholic) to know a little about their history. The style is somewhat dry at spots, but it picks up quickly.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, scholarly reading
Review: When I finished reading this book, I did something I've never done before: I turned to page one and started reading it all over again. This lively, thought-provoking book gives valuable insights into how the Western world came to be the way it is, and how the Irish played a leading role in that development.