Among the books I read in 2006, few matched the majestic sweep of Richard English's treatment of the cause of Irish nationalism. Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland (Macmillan, 29.99) is the work of an academic at the top of his game. Arguments may be made about the prioritisation of material in this ambitious undertaking but there's no doubting that the Queen's University historian sets to his task with gusto. All the big names of Irish history feature as English seeks sense in a cause that has cost Ireland so much. Irish Freedom is far from a light read but it is too important a contribution to be confined to dusty library shelves.

A real-world reminder of the shadowy world in which the IRA operated is delivered in the pages of Sean Boyne's highly readable Gunrunners: The Covert Arms Trail to Ireland (O'Brien, 19.95). There is material for several Hollywood scripts in Boyne's book which has excellent chapters on the 1970 arms crisis and the United States' contribution to how militant republicans acquired their arsenal of weaponry.

The means of waging war also dominated the pages of Patrick Cockburn's new book The Occupation War and Resistance in Iraq (Verso, 23.50). A mini-publishing industry has been born out of the Iraqi conflict but Cockburn's tome by far distinguishes itself from the pack by means of excellent story-telling and clinical analysis. It's a superb read from the Middle East correspondent of the London Independent and easily illustrates how Iraq, now a country at war with itself, will long sully the legacies of both Blair and Bush.

Reputations of an altogether different sort feature in the story of the British monarch as told in Jeremy Paxman's On Royalty (Penguin, 16). The residents of Buckingham Palace are such silly people . . . and the British public equally so for allowing bloodlines trample over equality and meritocracy . . . but Elizabeth and Co are good fun.

The worlds of politics and sport co-exist in my book of the year.

Berlin Games: How Hitler Stole the Olympic Dream (John Murray, 17) by Guy Walters is written with such finesse and voyeuristic detail.

The pages turn like a thriller as Walters brings alive the differing worlds that collided in Berlin in 1936 as the Nazi regime plotted its truly awful takeover of all things civilized. This is a book for long winter evenings or even sunsdrenched beaches later in 2007.

Kevin Rafter is Political Editor of the 'Sunday Tribune' and co-author of 'This is Charlie Bird' (Gill & Macmillan)

MUSIC Neil Dunphy

The high watermark of art pop in the 1980s or the most empty triumph of 'style' over substance?

Hmmm. . . Pet Shop Boys: Catalogue (Thames & Hudson, £29.95) charts every PSB single and album from a design perspective; the clothes Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe wore to the photoshoots, the negatives that were never used for the inner sleeve of 12" singles etc etc. Even if you can't stand the band this is a fascinating insight into what the fuss was all about.

Between Dunphy and BP Fallon there have been scores of books written about U2 but none can be considered definitive. U2 by U2 with Neil McCormick (Harper, 34.99) changes all that. Culled from hundreds of interviews with the band, McCormick has pieced together the ultimate story of the ultimate band. There are even new photos that you really have never seen before. Honest.

Rise Of The Ogre: The Gorillaz Autobiography (Penguin, £25) is a giant manga-style celebration of the unlikeliest band in popular music. A full-colour history featuring interviews with the cartoon characters Murdoc, 2D, Noodle and Russel Hobbs, this book features brand new art by Jamie Hewlett. A must have for music fans and art lovers alike.

Anyone with a morbid fascination for rock 'n' roll needs Number One In Heaven: The Heroes Who Died For Rock 'N' Roll (Penguin, £22). Airplanes, vomit, drugs, murders, even missing-presumed-dead cases, they're all here in a 600page chronology of morbidity.

Exhaustively researched and illustrated with gravestones and the like, the entries also do justice to the artist's contribution to music before passing away. It even notes near-death experiences of those still living.

Much like Dylan's Chronicles in 2005, producer Joe Boyd's White Bicycles: Making Music In The 1960s (Serpent's Tail, £11.99), is spared the usual flowery language and befuddled ruminations on the drugs, music, etc, of a revolutionary decade, and instead is a pacy, dense odyssey told with humility and humour. It's not definitive, nor does it pretend to offer a revisionist history of the era but does contain plenty of anecdotes of the time as well as nuggets about the music business and how it got to be this way.

IRISH Pat Nugent

The fascinating How The Irish Won The West by Myles Dungan (New Island, 24.95) looks at the role of Irish immigrants in the American west and, despite debunking some of Hollywood's mythologising of the era, is crammed with enough crazy characters and incident to keep Sergio Leone, John Wayne et al in material until judgement day, albeit with a harsh edge of reality that cinema audiences would probably have found hard to stomach. For example, there's the tale of the Donner party, stranded in the snowy mountains following a disastrous attempt to reach Oregon in the winter of 1846; the desperation of the situation is communicated so well that by the time they resort to cannibalism your only thought is why they didn't start sooner. Well-known names like Oscar Wilde and Billy the Kid flit across the tale too, and while Dungan takes a scholarly approach, his decision to concentrate on story rather than analysis ensures the book is always accessible and engrossing.

In the foreword to David Kenny's Erindipity . . . The Irish Miscellany (Mentor, 15), the author explains that his aim was to write a book with amazing factoids on Ireland (Biggest, smallest, longest, shortest and so forth) and to "cram in a load of other unrelated . . . and sometimes untrue . . . nuggets of information". The odd decision to add in false facts manages to undermine the entire book. The point of a book like this is that you dip in, read a piece of info that makes you think "I can't believe that", it sticks in your head and you regale friends with your interesting tidbit. The problem arises when it becomes difficult to separate a funny-interesting fact from the author being funny-ha-ha. A shame, as Kenny can be very witty.

Irish people always seem to have had a way of stringing English words together that foreigners tend to find beguiling, whether you're talking about literature or the current crop of successful Irish comedians. The linguistic contortions have their origins in the Irish language of course, which delights in odd metaphors and never using one word where you could put a sentence. Cead Mile Failte by Carmel Fitzgerald (Ashfield Press, 20) presents old Irish greetings and blessings (in both Irish and English), nicely complemented by scenes from Irish life shot by the photographer Ben Elves. Why say "I hope things work out alright" when you could say "Go mba lionmhar do thriobloidi le fiacla mo sheanmhathar" (May your troubles be as few as my grandmother's teeth). Maybe the rest of the world is right. We really are a bunch of bewitching, twinkly-eyed charmers.

Finally, to West Kerry Camera/Ceamara Chorca Dhuibhne by Padraig Tyers (Collins Press, 24.95). Chorca Dhuibhne is roughly the western half of the Dingle peninsula and the Blasket Islands, which will make most people immediately think of Peig Sayers and shudder involuntarily. But fear not. This collection of photographs is a paean to the area in the first half of the 20th century, lovingly put together by Tyers.

While Peig does feature, the evocative pictures present a place that suffered hardships but rose above them. And what photographs . . .

dancing at the crossroads, Tom Crean and his famous South Pole Inn, Eamon de Valera visiting in 1947, among many other treasures.

Even the simplest portrait photo of an island fisherman's harshlylined face conveys more than a chapter of prose could. Overall the book feels like a stark, and sad, reminder of an Ireland that is well and gone. To paraphrase another local luminary, Tomas O Criomhthain, the like of them will never be again, so this book is as close as you'll get.