While McCormack (emeritus, history, Goldsmiths College, United Kingdom) provides what may at times read like history or biography, it is cost certainly both a detailed and wide-ranging critique of 20th century Irish literature and its creators and facilitators. In this book, this study focuses on the idealist views of poet and dramatist W.B Yeats and concentrates on the part played by intellectual and biographer Joseph M. Hone in introducing the poet to the philosophy of George Berkeley and to the ideas of then contemporary thinkers Giovanni Gentile and Mario Manlio Rossi. The author explores the concept of sacrifice, and in contrast, works of J.M. Synge, George Moore, and Samuel Beckett are brought up to challenge the demand for sacrifice that is a foundation for several philosophies of culture. Readers will meet the well-known players of the era as well as the obscure. Distributed by Dufour. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)