Thomas Lynch

Booking Passage

From the pyramids to mortality tables, Galileo to Florence Nightingale, a vibrant history of numbers and the birth of statistics.

In thirty-five years and dozens of return trips to Ireland, Thomas Lynch has found a template for the larger world inside the small one, the planet in the local parish. Part memoir, part cultural study, Booking Passage is a brilliant, often comedic guidebook for those “fellow travelers, fellow pilgrims” making their way through the complexities of their own lives and times.

“[Lynch] draws an enticing picture of his home away from home: the dreamlike environs of Moveen, County Clare.”—New York Times Book Review

“[Lynch’s] is a subtle, quick-moving mind, and it is a pleasure to walk beside his mental perambulations . . . rendered with love and grace.”—Detroit Free Press

“He’s no mere tourist but a man who’s made a deep personal commitment to the land from which his forebears came and who has a sensitive, nuanced understanding of the place and its people. . . . It’s a lovely book.”—Washington Post