The Gaelic Athletic Association, 1884-2009 - Tapa dura

This book, which in May 2010 won the North American Society for Sports History (NASSH) award for the best edited volume published in 2009, brings together some of the leading writers in the area of Irish history to assess the importance of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in Irish society since its founding in 1884 and it is the first key book to center on the GAA and Irish history. While there has been much written about the GAA, the bulk of work has concentrated on the sporting aspects of the Association - the great games and famous players - rather than the role that the GAA has played in wider Irish history. The chapters cover a large chronological span dating back to the origins of hurling, through the foundation of the GAA, its role in the political life of the nation and ending with an assessment of some of the main issues facing the GAA into the twenty-first century. Importantly, the book also offers original and insightful work on areas including the class make up of the GAA, the centrality of Amateurism in the Association, the role of the Irish language, and the ways in which films have featured Gaelic games.

Mike Cronin is the Academic Director of Boston College Ireland. He has written extensively on the cultural and sporting history of Ireland, and his works include: The Blueshirts and Irish Politics (1997), Sport and Nationalism in Ireland: Gaelic Games, Soccer and Irish National Identity Since 1884 (1999) and (with Daryl Adair), The Wearing of the Green. A History of St Patrick's Day (2002). He is currently working on a major oral history of the GAA and, for the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism, a history of sporting heritage sites in Ireland. Paul Rouse lectures at UCD and works on the sporting and cultural history in Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centurie. He is currently a director of the GAA Oral History Project and have written extensively about the history of the GAA. William Murphy is a lecturer in Irish Studies at Mater Dei Institute of Education, DCU, and is co-founder of Sports History Ireland. He has written on sports history and on the history of the Irish revolution. His Political Imprisonment and the Irish, 1910-1921 will appear with Oxford University Press in 2010.