We Don't Know Ourselves by Fintan O'Toole

The history of Ireland as seen through the clear eyes of one of it's citizens is what we have here. It starts to be a detailed history after WWII and the set up is one of poverty and under-industrialization. Between 1949 and 1956 the GDP of the countries of the common market had grown by 42%, Britain by 21%, Ireland by only 8%. Emigration was high and marriage was low. The population was at an all-time low of 2.8 million in 1961, by which time Ireland had to decide whether to open itself to free trade or remain as a protected and very isolated space. So Ireland opened up, later joining the European Union, and all the good that comes to poor countries with those changes came to Ireland, but socially it remained a very restrictive society, with everything, including education, dominated by the Catholic church. The author is particularly sardonic on the subject of what the letter of the law was in Ireland and what the actuality on the ground was when it came to things like contraception and abortion--but the treatment of women in general and women who got pregnant out of wedlock in particular is both dead on, and in 2022 America strangely prescient of what was to come in the United States. There is a good deal of corruption in politics that is unflinchingly described, and familiar. Money in politics is dangerous and yet another thing we Americans haven't learned very well. This is a good read, especially if you have a love of or a bit of the Irish in you.