This book emerges from the 25 Irish Historic Towns Atlases published to date. It brings together their authors' expertise and insights under the guidance of the editor, medieval historian H.B Clarke. With an attractive and highly readable design it explores what is unique about Irish towns and what is generic. Through comparisons it considers various categories of Irish urban life, how Ireland's major towns and cities interacted and changed over time and why that might be so. It considers town morphology as a social process in the making of urban Ireland and its distinct personality. The book comprises 20 individual essays that offer new perspectives on urban life in Ireland. In the first section, pairs of comparable towns, and in one case three towns, are explored - Armagh and Kells, Kilkenny and Limerick, Kildare and Tuam, Ennis and Longford, Belfast and Derry~Londonderry, Athlone, Longford and Mullingar. The second section focuses on aspects of urban life such as religion, manufacturing and education. In the final section, three critiques open further ground, suggesting various approaches and tools for understanding towns and their history, shape and diversity. 'Maps and Texts' broadens the ways in which atlases might be used, making it suitable for second level students as well as for more focused scholars. The book is in full colour and illustrated with over 90 maps, reconstructions, views and photographs.

Editors: H.B. Clarke, Sarah Gearty
Series editors: Anngret Simms, H.B. Clarke, Raymond Gillespie, Jacinta Prunty; Consultant editor: J.H. Andrews; Cartographic editor: Sarah Gearty; Editorial assistants: Angela Murphy, Jennifer Moore.

Foreword by: Professor J.H. Andrews