Give Us Back the Bad Roads, (Currach Books. 2018).
Publication date: 2019 On May 1st 1984, John Waters drove to Dublin to begin a career in Irish journalism that was to last for 31 years. During that time, he was to become a nationally recognised writer and commentator who specialised in raising unpopular issues of public importance, some rooted in Irish history, others persisting […]
Was It For This?: Why Ireland Lost the Plot (Transworld Ireland, 2012)
Publication date: 2012 (Transworld Ireland) John Waters’ remarkable new book sweeps through the pages of our recent history to get to the heart our political, social and existential identity crisis. Ranging across a vast canvas, Was It For This…? argues that the Celtic Tiger was built on a collective delusion, and that the seeds of its destruction […]
Feckers: 50 People Who Fecked Up Ireland. (Constable, 2010)
A satirical and yet intensely serious romp through the failures and feck-ups of Independent Ireland through the medium of personality.
Beyond Consolation: On How We Became Too Clever for God and Our Own Good (Continuum, 2010)
A reflection on Irish society’s relationship with the Absolute, arising from a remarkable radio interview given by my late colleague, Nuala O’Faolain, on her diagnosis with terminal cancer. Publication date: 2010 Waters explores the process by which the hope of a society was sabotaged and plundered in the name of a mis-defined freedom and a […]
Lapsed Agnostic (Continuum, 2007)
A reflection on my personal faith journey combined with an analysis of the condition of faith in Irish culture and society.
LifeStory (IHF, 2006)
I was the originator and editor of another IHF fundraising project, a book designed to assist people in search of their lineage in compiling family trees and collecting information about their family histories.
The Politburo Has Decided That You Are Unwell, (Liffey, 2004)
A collection of pieces on culture, law and politics, with a particular focus on the welfare of men and boys in Irish society.
The Whoseday Book (IHF, 2000)
I was the originator and managing editor of the Irish Hospice Foundation (IHF)’s millennium fundraising project in which 366 artists and writers were each invited to make a statement in a postcard-sized space. The Whoseday Book earned some €3 million for the IHF.
An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Ireland (Duckworth, 1997):
A study of Irish life and culture at the outset of the mid-1990s Celtic Tiger period.
Every Day Like Sunday? (Poolbeg, 1995)
A collection of essays depicting the condition of Ireland up to the mid-1990s. The title is borrowed from song by Morrissy, refers to the run-down nature of many Irish towns.