Climate Change: The Challenge To Us All Sean McDonagh Columba Press npa 200pp ARE environmentalists overstating the case about climate change? Rising sea levels? David Attenborough, McDonagh reminds us, a long-time sceptic of climate change, is now convinced that global warming is happening. Should it continue, should the sea continue to rise because of melting ice caps, places such as Cork, Belfast and Waterford will be inundated. McDonagh cites George Bush as being in denial about climate change because of "his cronies" in the oil business. In the meantime, the Irish are not doing much by way of example. So, what's to be done? Financial sanctioning, as it is the only thing to which most people will respond.

The Joys of Pissing Professor Jimmy Riddle NFK, a Mercier imprint, 10 224pp OH, I know, I know. That's what I thought, too, when Professor Piddlfoops Riddle's book came in the front door. Podge and Rodge give their approval on the cover . . . "We pissed ourselves when we read this book" . . . so you can be sure all the contributions are in the best possible taste. After years of research, Riddle provides advice on how to pee into a bottle sans spillage. How to pee at Irish music festivals. He gives examples of people who drink the stuff: but hasn't the body just got rid of it? If you inadvertently sit on a sea urchin "pee on the affected area!". But how on earth do you pee on your own bum? Very undergrad.

The Burning of Cork Gerry White and Brendan O'Shea Mercier 15 255pp BY 1920, throughout Ireland, and particularly in Cork city and county, the British crown forces were losing the initiative in their campaign to wipe out the IRA. This book is a step-by-step account of a spiralling series of events over nine months that led to the burning of the city, the punishment doled out by the British.

Kidnappings lead to farms being burned, ambushes lead to curfew, assassinations lead to the arrests of innocent civilians. The incident that lit the fuse to the night of infamy was the IRA ambush at Kilmichael in which 17 of the British forces were shot dead. Predictably, the British delivered a lesson to their enemies. But in doing so they descended into barbarism and world opinion turned against them.

A Dublin Documentary By Thomas Kinsella O'Brien Press 19 111pp KINSELLA'S adult recollections of the city are my childhood ones. His poems are shaped around his personal memories of the city's streetscapes, alleyways, inner city farms. Yes, farms within walking distance of O'Connell Street. They are vanished now, not leaving so much as a telltale scar. In 'Hen Woman', a woman knows her hen is about to lay. She chases the hen across a yard only to see the egg smash and dribble down a grating: "She stood staring in blank anger/Then her eyes came to life, and she laughed/And let the bird flap away/"It's all the one/There's plenty more where that came from."

Service Wash By Rupert Smith Serpent's Tail 12 186pp THIS has to be the most poorly written book of the year to date. The main character, Paul, would like to write "sensitive prose fiction". Instead he agrees to ghost the memoirs of a TV soap star, Eileen Weathers. Eileen's career is on the skids and hopefully the autobiography will halt the decline. Every cliche in the book: "Eileen was hot. Now she's not." It gets worse. Eileen encounters her husband having it away with a bimbette in the marital bed and turfs the bimbette down the stairs. Bimbette is "saved from certain death by a bank of lilies!"

Where? At the foot of the stairs?