
We Don't Know Ourselves
A Personal History of Modern Ireland
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Narrated by:
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Aidan Kelly
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By:
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Fintan O'Toole
In We Don't Know Ourselves, Fintan O'Toole weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary "backwater" to an almost totally open society - perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history.
Born to a working-class family in the Dublin suburbs, O'Toole served as an altar boy and attended a Christian Brothers school. He was enthralled by American Westerns suddenly appearing on Irish television, which were not that far from his own experience, given that Ireland's main export was beef and it was still not unknown for herds of cattle to clatter down Dublin's streets. Yet the Westerns were a sign of what was to come.
O'Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish, women in particular. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism. In O'Toole's telling, America became a lodestar, from John F. Kennedy's 1963 visit, when the American president was welcomed as a native son, to the emergence of the Irish technology sector in the late 1990s, driven by American corporations, which set Ireland on the path toward particular disaster during the 2008 financial crisis.
©2021 Fintan O'Toole (P)2022 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...




















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And repetitive. It was a slog to get through the last 25-30%. I wanted to shout: Got it, we know how awful the Catholic Church was and how corrupt the political leaders were. Got it.
Informative, negative, repetitive
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Wonderful
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Super prep for my trip to Ireland
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truly spectacular
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Absolutely brilliant
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Very dense and informative
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One of the Most Fascinating and Engaging Books I’ve Ever Read
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A beautifully written and compellingly told story
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Personal and Social History Intertwined
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We’ll writing and well delivered
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