Distilling a lifetime's scholarship, this meditation on the nature of history challenges hitherto sacrosanct assumptions about Ireland's past. The author explores the essential structure of what is called Irish history and asks provocative questions about popular misconceptions. Even where such misconceptions have been refuted by academic research, the author points out, the information has not percolated into the general domain because modern historians, writing mainly for one another, have lost the wider audience. Criticizing his own profession for purporting to be scientific while largely ignoring the implications of, for example, scientific archaeology, Stewart sets out to open up the closed shop of Irish history for the general reader.