How the Irish Saved Civilization, Book Review Example

Thomas Cahill, a celebrated American scholar in his book How the Irish Saved Civilization seeks to highlight very salient aspects of Irish history that was hitherto unknown outside the shores of Ireland notwithstanding the profound implications this aspect of history has on happenings in our day and age. Unsurprisingly, the Irish throughout living history have always been accustomed to the branding of the medieval and classical Irish race is primitive and very distant from anything to do with civilization. Thomas Cahill’s work therefore comes as a direct face-on assault to this assertion.

The writer’s presentation style is exclusively unique, judging by the fact that his narration is settled down to the core of the message he sends out to his reader. No single detail is left out in his quest to make the message distinct and comprehensible; yet defined by its simplicity. Come to think of the fact that the two lead characters in the book St. Patrick and St. Augustine present a chronicled account of the transformation that defines the standing orders of Christian theology without any dint of prejudice.

To understand this, it is absolutely necessary to make a distinctive comparison of the characters of both St. Patrick and St. Augustine. Personally, this is one part of the historical orientation that strikes me the most.

Associating civilization to the Irish people amounted to a crude misrepresentation of conventional historical facts. Nevertheless, Thomas Cahill’s book makes a radical rebuttal against such a hasty conclusion that could be at best be an expression of naivety. It is understood from the following quote that, “Rome should ever fall was unthinkable to Romans: its foundations were unassailable, sturdily sunk in a storied past and steadily built on for eleven centuries and more. There was, of course, the prophecy. Someone, usually someone in his cups, could always be counted on to bring up that old saw: the Prophecy of the Twelve Eagles, each eagle representing a century, leaving us with – stubby fingers counting out the decades in a puddle of wine – only seventy years remaining!” (Chapter 1, p. 12). Clearly, the above quotation extracted from Thomas Cahill is an indictment to the civilizations that existed prior to the advent of the Irish in their monumental achievement of redeeming civilization.

On the personal level, the life of St. Augustine expressed through his conversion and dedication to the cause of Christianity is illustrative of a host of virtues that are reasonably within the grasp of humanity. It reinforces the needed to be soberly reflective within the cause of life and adopting strategies that can trigger the shifting of gears to serve the ultimate cause of mankind. Collective gains as humans can be initiated by individual convictions translated into pragmatic steps of life. To make mention of the words of St. Augustine when he was quoted as saying that, “How could a grown man have spent so much time so foolishly? Well, it’s what everyone else was doing. This is a static world. Civilized life, like the cultivation of Ausonius’s magnificent Bordeaux vineyards, lies in doing well what has been done before,” is justifiably within the conceivable actions of humanity.