This hefty tome consists of 14 essays on the academic history of what the subtitle calls "QCG/UCG/NUI, Galway" and could be said to be the first and last word on the university that was founded in 1845. Its publication marked the 150th anniversary of the opening of what was then known as Queen's College Galway and the essays, written by graduates and staff members who are experts in their fields and who bring fresh approaches and much new research to their contributions, cover the major disciplines and the professors and lecturers who taught there. They throw revealing light on the personalities and idiosyncracies (and they were numerous) of luminaries such as D'Arcy W. Thompson, Professor of Greek (1864-1902), who wrote nursery rhymes and talked to his dog while out walking, or Thomas Maguire (who became Prof of Moral Philosophy in 1882), who was involved in the notorious Pigott forgery scandal of 1887, or Alice Perry, who was awarded a BE in 1906, the first woman engineering graduate in the world. Professor Gearoid O Tuathaigh contributes an introductory essay on the ideological and political background to the establishment of the so-called Queen's Colleges in Ireland. The book, handsome in size and appearance, has many photographs.