Review
"The funniest book I've read this year."--John Walsh, The Independent (U.K.)

"A travelogue of Ireland told through great set pieces and jokes...The author seems to have a natural aptitude for meeting funny, strange, and fascinating people. This book will make you laugh out loud."--The Irish News (Belfast)

"McCarthy's Bar is so unrelentingly funny it needs to be taken in small doses...When it comes to playing stooge in ridiculous travel situations, he makes Michael Palin look shy and Bill Bryson positively somber."--The Australian



Review
"The funniest book I've read this year."--John Walsh, The Independent (U.K.)

"A travelogue of Ireland told through great set pieces and jokes...The author seems to have a natural aptitude for meeting funny, strange, and fascinating people. This book will make you laugh out loud."--The Irish News (Belfast)

"McCarthy's Bar is so unrelentingly funny it needs to be taken in small doses...When it comes to playing stooge in ridiculous travel situations, he makes Michael Palin look shy and Bill Bryson positively somber."--The Australian



Review
"The funniest book I've read this year."--John Walsh, The Independent (U.K.)

"A travelogue of Ireland told through great set pieces and jokes...The author seems to have a natural aptitude for meeting funny, strange, and fascinating people. This book will make you laugh out loud."--The Irish News (Belfast)

"McCarthy's Bar is so unrelentingly funny it needs to be taken in small doses...When it comes to playing stooge in ridiculous travel situations, he makes Michael Palin look shy and Bill Bryson positively somber."--The Australian



Book Description
Despite the many exotic places Pete McCarthy has visited, he finds that nowhere else can match the particular magic of Ireland, his mother’s homeland. In McCarthy's Bar, his journey begins in Cork and continues along the west coast to Donegal in the north. Traveling through spectacular landscapes, but at all times obeying the rule, “never pass a bar that has your name on it,” he encounters McCarthy’s bars up and down the land, meeting fascinating people before pleading to be let out at four o’clock in the morning.

Written by someone who is at once an insider and an outside, McCarthy's Bar is a wonderfully funny and affectionate portrait of a rapidly changing country.



From the Inside Flap
The #1 Irish Bestseller

Despite the many exotic places Pete McCarthy has visited, he finds that nowhere else can match the particular magic of Ireland, his mother’s homeland. In McCarthy's Bar, his journey begins in Cork and continues along the west coast to Donegal in the north. Traveling through spectacular landscapes, but at all times obeying the rule, “never pass a bar that has your name on it,” he encounters McCarthy’s bars up and down the land, meeting fascinating people before pleading to be let out at four o’clock in the morning.

Written by someone who is at once an insider and an outside, McCarthy's Bar is a wonderfully funny and affectionate portrait of a rapidly changing country.

Praise for Pete McCarthy and McCarthy’s Bar:

"[McCarthy] is a worthy addition to the ranks of P.J. O'Rourke, Bill Bryson and Peter Mayle...He narrates a series of hilarious and surprising adventures with an acerbic eye and a comedian's gift for timing...This wonderful debut will appeal to readers who are looking for a well-observed travel guide, or simply for its incisive hilarity." - Publishers Weekly

"[McCarthy's] chronicle of what he heard in these neighborhood gathering places/social clubs/confessionals was quintessentially Irish, which means hilarious, sentimental, surprising and revealing." - The Dallas Morning News

"McCarthy makes an amiable traveling companion - witty, affable, with an endearing knack for meeting, or attracting, the most eccentric characters...With self-deprecating wit and a sly sense of the absurd, he makes even the most mundane experience entertaining." - Booklist

"Unfailingly sharp, good-humored, and offbeat: sure to please Celtophiles of every greenish hue." - Kirkus Reviews

"Fans of Bill Bryson will enjoy reading McCarthy's droll narrative of his rediscovery of his family's roots in Ireland." - Library Journal

"McCarthy's Bar is as far removed from the staid, traditional travel guide as one likely could get and still learn where to go, what to see, how much it might cost and what to expect." - San Antonio Express News



About the Author
Pete McCarthy was born in England to an Irish mother and an English father. He is the writer and performer of many travel series for radio and television in the United Kingdom. McCarthy's Bar, his first book, was a bestseller in Ireland, England, and Australia.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

One man's hysterical journey around the emerald isle in search of namesake pubs and his Irish roots —A #1 bestseller in Ireland.

Pete McCarthy has long held a deep love for his mother's homeland and admits that, despite the many exotic places he has visited, nowhere can match the particular magic of Ireland. To find out whether this is due to overwhelming nostalgia for childhood holidays or to a deeper tie with the country of his ancestors, Pete sets off on a trip around Ireland. Travelling through spectacular landscapes, but at all times obeying the rule "Never Pass a Bar That Has Your Name On It," he encounters McCarthy's Bars up and down the isle, meeting fascinating, friendly, funny people before pleading to be let out at four o'clock in the morning.

Written by someone who is at once both insider and outsider, McCarthy's Bar is a wonderfully funny and affectionate look at modern Ireland.

About the Author:Pete McCarthy is the writer and performer of many series for radio and television, including the BBC's "Desperately Seeking Something," and Channel 4's "Travelog," for which he won the Travelex Award for Best TV Travel Writer. McCarthy's Bar is his first book.

FROM THE CRITICS

Daily Telegraph

Funny, informative, intelligent. I'd go anywhere with this man.

London Times

Jocular, but never patronising, McCarthy is the ideal guide.

Library Journal

Fans of Bill Bryson will enjoy reading McCarthy's droll narrative of his rediscovery of his family's roots in Ireland. Winner of the Travelex Award for Best TV Travel Writer, BBC personality McCarthy takes the reader on an odyssey through Ireland, where he unfailingly obeys his rule: "Never Pass a Bar That Has Your Name On It." The son of an Irishwoman and an Englishman, McCarthy spent many idyllic summers in the Emerald Isle and here revisits places he remembers from his youth. Traversing rural areas from Cork to Donegal, McCarthy observes that although much has changed, the Irish people of his childhood have not. Humorous and history-laden, McCarthy's debut is already a No. 1 best seller in the land of his forefathers and is sure to be popular in public libraries.--Sandy Knowles,, Henderson Cty. P.L., NC Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An affectionate portrayal of the eccentricities and charms of western Ireland by a quintessentially self-deprecating British traveler. Following in the footsteps of Eric Newby and Redmond O'Hanlon, BBC writer McCarthy takes us along on his rather pointless but colorful wanderings in western Ireland. Raised in northern England, as a child the author often spent long holidays with his mother's family in Eire—well before the country became the trendy, buffed-up place that it is today. Like Frank McCourt (whose Angela's Ashes put considerable fat into the fire of the current craze for the Emerald Isle), McCarthy occasionally waxes sentimental about the old days when things were gray and parochial. Early on he wonders,"Is it possible to have some kind of genetic memory of a place where you've never lived, but your ancestors have? Or am I just a sentimental fool, my judgement fuddled by nostalgia, Guinness, and the romance of the diaspora?" Mercifully for us, McCarthy (although he rightfully bemoans the theme-park atmosphere that accompanies economic prosperity and development) is no self-righteous moralizer ruing the fact that his ancestral countrymen now have a bit of money in their pockets. Neither is he a know-it-all bore. Well aware that a good companion is the first necessity of a good trip, the author scrupulously avoids pedantry and never misses a chance to ridicule his own ineptitude. (Chancing upon a 19th-century sheep shed that has recently been remodeled into a bed and breakfast, he gleefully relates the landlady's remark after shaking his hand:"Sure, ye can see ye've never done a hard day's work in your life.") Unfailingly sharp, good-humored, and offbeat:suretoplease Celtophiles of every greenish hue.