The Goodness of Guinness

A Loving History of the Brewery, Its People, and the City of Dublin

By: Tony Corcoran

Narrated by: John Keating

Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

Celebrate 250 years of Guinness! There is no other company, industry, or premises more closely aligned - indeed almost synonymous—with its hometown than Guinness’s St. James’s Gate Brewery and the city of Dublin. From the company’s modest beginnings in 1759 to its heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and its continued strength into the 21st century, Guinness has had an enormous influence over the city’s economic, social, and cultural life. In this warm and fascinating piece of history, Tony Corcoran examines the magnitude of the brewery’s operation, and the working lives of the thousands of Dubliners who have depended on Guinness for their livelihood, either directly or indirectly. The company’s unusually progressive treatment of its workers - health care, training, and housing - is revealed in detail, as is the Guinness family’s philanthropy and compassion towards the less well-off residents of the city. Tracing Guinness’s progressive attitudes to their roots, Corcoran also explores the important roles of the strong-willed women in each generation of the Guinness dynasty. A labor of love, full of anecdotes, humor, and historical insights into one of Dublin’s most important and best-loved institutions.

“Whenever I bleed, I am always surprised to see that my blood is not black. Certainly, when you consider that I was born into two Guinness families, had two Guinness grandfathers and five Guinness uncles, and was on the premises of Guinness before I could walk, I am as much a product of Guinness as the black stuff itself.” - Tony Corcoran

©2005 Tony Corcoran (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Not about Guinness

Any additional comments?

Read the small print beneath the huge letters that spell out Guinness. This book is about life in Dublin, then it is about how Guinness as a company influenced life in Dublin. With mundane details that jump forward and backward through time I really only found the book to be interesting on a minimal level from the standpoint of how humanity existed 200 years ago.

awful

just a reading of facts and numbers. don't waste your time or money. Nothing interesting.

Dry...Like Murphy's Irish Stout

I learned a few interesting things that likely could have been picked up by perusing a Wikipedia page. Otherwise this was like listening to someone read an accountants ledger book.