More than a decade ago, Dublin University Press published a collection of the author’s writings on Irish topics. Their main concerns were issues such as the harmful effects of the unusual Irish voting system and the poor performance of the country’s bureaucracy. It can fairly be claimed for one of them ( The Lemmings of Democracy ) that it showed well in advance why and how Ireland would be particularly hard hit by the financial crisis of 2009.

In this new and expanded edition, more recently written Chapters take up the themes of the earlier ones, but put more emphasis on innovation and history. One of them, Understanding Britain’s Brexit Parliament, provides an essential clue to the problems with the Irish voting system identified earlier. The History group contains an account of the scarcely known but crucial part Ireland played in two scientific revolutions. It also reveals how the law of Limited Liability on which every Corporation in the world depends, had its origin in Dublin’s eighteenth-century independent Parliament.

Much of the time intervening between the two editions was devoted to the research and writing of the book, How Capitalism Destroyed Itself: Technology Displaced by Financial Innovation. These Irish articles are in fact a running commentary on the evolution of this global process in one country.