Book of Irish Families: v. 1: Great and Small O'laughlin, Michael C. Book of Irish Families, Great & Small, V. 1.: Amazon.co.uk: Michael C. O'Laughlin: Books

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Product Description

From the Publisher

The Hallmark in Irish Family History and Surnames
This is the master volume to the 32 volume Irish Family set. Contains the index to the 5 volume set to date. This First volume stands on its own, includes over 20,000 names, 2,000 histories, 350 authentic arms are fully illustrated, many found in no other work in print. Subsequent volumes expand on histories by county in Ireland.

From the Author

More Irish Families are covered here than in any other work
I have included many families left out of other works. This is a special 20th anniversary edition of Irish Families, (and is key for the supplemental volumes which follow.) if you were to purchase just one book on Irish Families, I have written this work for you..

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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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Average Customer Review

3.7 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I found this book great!, 5 May 1999

By A Customer

I found information in this book that I haven't found elsewhere. Right now my book is borrowed out by a friend, with another friend anxious to see it.

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing but still useful, 28 April 1999

By A Customer

I have to say that I found this book a bit of a disappointment especially having read the author's comment "if you were to purchase just one book on Irish Families, I have written this work for you". In fact if this the only book you consult on Irish families you will be most upset. The book makes the mistake of trying to reinvent the wheel by cataloging families from old data sources. This has already been done, much better, by several other authors. For the most prominent families, this publication adds nothing to the existing knowledge base. It's attempt to include rare names is honorable, but the amount of information provided is scant, at best. For example, "The family of Mulvey is traditionally linked to Co. Leitrim and it has remained so in modern times" hardly does justice to this once great sept. The entries are also inconsistent, for some the Irish form of the name is included and for others it is not. I would have expected all of the old Gaelic names to have their Irish form included. The coats of arms are a real let down, not only are they in monochrome (colour is the essence of heraldry), but the quality of reproduction is poor. It would have been better to leave them out altogether. There are also quite a few errors and omissions (though the author does admit this at the start). One that stuck me was the list of Jewish-Irish names which omits the most famous of all, Briscoe. A look at the entry for Briscoe shows no mention of the family's Jewish heritage, despite the fact that at least members of the family have had high political profiles in Dublin. The book claims Flaherty and Laverty as the same name and while this is true in terms of their root word origin in Irish, the names are racially quite distinct. In another case the book fails to link the two names Haughey and Haffey. I found the book too heavily reliant on "Keating's History", which while excellent, is far from the only source available. Another off-putting aspect is the fact that the names are not listed in proper alphabetical order and names beginning with "B" crop up among the "A's" and so on. On the plus side, the book does include a lot of information and it is not expensive as such publications go. In short, this is not a book for one-name researchers but should be on the shelves of all with a general interest in Irish names.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The only book that had my mothers family in Ireland, 14 April 1999

By A Customer

This is the only book that had my mothers family and coat of arms in Ireland - and Ive got them all. The arms were not in color - but the books with color arms did not have my family at all ! I am at the IGF library now and am doing side by side comparisons...this one is a winner