Some interesting-sounding new books for 2007, per their reviews: 1. "The Second World War And Irish Women - An Oral History," by Mary MULDOWNEY, Irish Academic press, p/b, ISBN 978-0-7165-2887-6. "Dr. MULDOWNEY drew her material from interviews with less than 30 women and supported it with the Mass Observation diary of Belfast woman Moya WOODSIDE. The women, from a variety of social and educational backgrounds mainly lived in Belfast and Dublin between 1939 and 1945, but some of them went to Britain to take up war work, in factories or in the forces. Women of one class were fondly pictured as watching, waiting and weeping, in wartime; the lower classes were expected to construct meals, clothing and domestic comforts out of the very minimum permitted by the restrictions on food, fuel and clothes ..." 2. "Jack's World - Farming on the Sheep's Head Peninsula 1920-2003," by Sean SHEEHAN with photography by Danny GRALTON and Ciaran WATSON, Atrium-Cork University Press, ISBN 978-0-9552261-1-3, h/b. "Jack Sheehan was one of eleven children born into an impoverished farming family on the Sheep's Head peninsula in southwest Ireland. Growing up in hungry times, he stayed on the farm all his eighty-three years, taking it over when his father died and steadfastly caring for its fields through the dormant 1950s and the better times that came in the decades that followed. He lived to see the eclipse of his farming world and to view with dismay the way encroaching property speculators and consumerism were changing the nature of his landscape. Jack Sheehan was born just as the Irish state was coming into existence and his life is as revealing of that country's history as the more familiar accounts of national figures. "Jack's World's" is illustrated in colour with specially commissioned photographs taken by three people, Danny Gralton, Ciaran Watson and Danny Levy Sheehan, who all knew Jack and know his farm. The book is also illustrated with maps, including one showing the farm's fields and their Irish names that were preserved by Jack, and photographs of early documents relating to his farm's history. The book's unique sources, in addition to the memories of friends and family who knew Jack and shared aspects of his world, include diaries kept by Jack from the early 1930s onwards." Another book review mentions the gorgeous photographs which are entirely supportive of the story, including a stunning view of Jack's Arum lillies. The author is apparently the nephew of the subject.