For this large and comprehensive volume, the editors, F H A Aalen, Kevin Whelan, and Matthew Stout have brought 25 contributors together to examine how this interaction with our surroundings had produced what we have come to think of as a typical Irish landscape. As these assorted geographers, architects, archaeologists, historians and scientists note, our ability to shape the landscape now is far greater than it ever was in the past. In covering fifteen topics ranging from mining, boglands, plantations, house design, demesnes, and transport, the contributors to this book show how the landscape is, as one of the editors, F H A Aalen puts it, a synthesis of habitat and history. When first published in 1997 the Atlas of the Irish Landscape was an enormous success as a best-seller, going to print six times. In this revised and up-dated edition, much of the content has been rewritten, sections, such as one on the impact of the Celtic Tiger, have been added and there are some detailed case studies of areas of particular interest.

Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape is a well-balanced collection of informative maps and diagrams along with flowing text and evocative photography. The early chapters cover almost every aspect of Irish history that has left a lasting mark on the landscape; from early Bronze Age settlements, through the growth of agriculture during the middle ages up to the house building boom in the 1990's. Later chapters focus on key components of the Irish Landscape, geographical, cultural and industrial, looking at their changing forms and uses. The closing chapters look at specific case studies from every corner of Ireland and look at how the a-fore mentioned area's have touched and shaped these islands, valley's and villages. Every page of the book is filled with a wealth of information that bear's testament to the contributions from 26 leading experts in their fields. Along with the constant geographical orientation provided by the minature map on every page, the reader is always well informed on both the subject being covered and it's position in relation to the rest of the country. Overall the book encapsulates a breathtaking range of topics whilst maintaining a level of accessibility and detail that make it an excellent addition to household and academic bookshelves alike.

There's just so much to enjoy in this book that it's impossible to name all its good features without turning this review into an encyclopedia. Sections such as 'Joy of Small Things' are innovative, as are the detailed investigations of such places as Tory Island and Inistioge in county Kilkenny. Maps and photographs abound: a source of pure pleasure. We can see endangered and vanished species, like the phone boxes that once adorned many a main street and the narrow-gauge railway in county Leitrim, 1957. We can also examine modern invasive species, like mobile phone masts disguised as trees and the giant rhubarb that stalks Achill island. With over 400 pages, printed in Malta, the book is an ideal dipping-into volume, unreservedly recommended.

This second edition of the Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape is much more than a reprint of the 1997 original. The editors explain that the text has been revamped and expanded (including five new case studies) and that more than 500 maps and photos have been added. The results are spectacular. There is extraordinary detail within these pages and readers will learn everything they could ever hope to know about the impact of nine millennia of human activity on the Irish landscape: a landscape that reveals the process of 'history in slow motion'. The Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape provides excellent overviews: from the forts and tombs of ancient Ireland, through the bustling ecclesiastical landscape of the medieval era, to the tribulations and triumphs of the modern age (British colonialism, famine and, in recent memory the island's economic boom times). The books greatest joy is that, while scholarly, it's highly readable and very pretty. The maps and pictures are wonderful and the sections that deal with specific phenomena (fields and forests, housing and mines, transport routes, energy supplies and much besides are exemplary. Ireland is changing, not least because the population is now far more urbanised than anyone could have predicted a century ago. But, as this book demonstrates wonderfully, its landscape has been in flux for thousands of years. This is one of the most accessible and engaging books you're ever likely to read about Ireland, which isn't something that can often be said of an atlas.

The trouble with chardonnay conservationists, and other books - ANOTHER LIFE WHEN ITS first, majestic edition appeared, 14 years ago, I described it as an atlas with attitude – this from its weighty protest against the vandalising of the Irish countryside, already well in progress. Digesting the subsequent horrors of the Tiger years, the second edition of the Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape (Cork University Press, €59) verges at times on apoplexy. It rails against “sclerotic engineer-run” local authorities, the failures of “chardonnay conservationists” and planners who “presided over an appalling collapse of landscape quality”. But Prof Kevin Whelan, Ireland’s most acute and passionate rural historian, does more than let off steam. His essay at the heart of the new edition urges a long-overdue reorganisation of public life, swelling upwards from parish and townland. He also offers a vision for rural landscape and society, led by rediscovering “Deep Ireland”. Philosophically, this “represents seasonal, ritual, communal time rather than biographical individual time”. More simply it exhorts “renewed respect for the local, the vernacular, the traditional and the distinctive”, not least the spirit that moves within the GAA and the local Tidy Towns committee. As a geographer with a strong economic awareness, Whelan delves into options that make much timely sense, among them more powerful marketing of artisan food to Europe from a “clean, green” Ireland embodied in the image of the traditional family farm. Our landscape, he says, has been surprisingly forgiving of recent excesses, and as we now have enough new buildings for the next generation the challenge is to “restore and reuse”. But the drive towards a living, characterful landscape, with room for both nature and a human right to roam, will have to find its spark locally – “dragooning, compulsion and adversarial relations with local communities simply do not work.” All of which eminently fits this great book for the bedside table (plus supportive beanbag) of our new President, whose aspirations to the ideal and those of Whelan are clearly in close accord. With renewal of at least a third of its content, fresh regional case studies from new young geographers, and even more abundant and revelatory maps and photographs, it is also a definitive synthesis of the countryside, its habitats and its history that belongs in every Irish home and school. The first edition, also edited by Whelan, with the geographer Prof Fred Aalen and the cartographer Dr Mathew Stour, sold more than 21,000 copies. The second edition deserves to do quite as well.

This is a remarkable work, and there cannot be a national community of historians or environmentalists anywhere else in the world that will not envy the Irish achievement.

Superlatives are inadequate to describe this magnificent Atlas. I cannot do it justice; you must see it yourself to appreciate it properly. Give yourself plenty of time to savor it, because each new page is an entrancing treasure trove, and you will want to linger over each and every one . . . The volume celebrates the glory and the beauty of the entire island, both north and south.