Thomas Cahill's book "How the Irish Saved Civilization," is called the untold story of Ireland's heroic role in maintaining Western culture, from the fall of the Roman Empire until the European dark ages. The main point of this book, as specified in the book's title, is how the Irish saved civilization. How they allegedly did that is the real meaning of this book.
             The author, Thomas Cahill, makes his views very clear throughout the entire book with the use of many facts, statistics, and details. He clearly explains how Rome's power crumbled and created chaos and anarchy all over Europe. Mr. Cahill does a magnificent job describing how European culture changed from the Roman to the medieval civilization, a civilization with a system of landlords and serfs. Other points of interest, which he made, are the spread of Irish missionaries and the study of St. Patrick.
             He covers two centuries of the early Middle Ages (5th and 6th) and he makes it enjoyable to read. First, he starts the book by explaining to us how reliable history really is. Mr. Cahill doesn't necessarily agree with writer Emil Cioran's remark that "history proves nothing because it contains everything" (Cahill pg. 5). He says instead that "every age writes history anew, reviewing deeds and texts of other ages from its own vantage point" (Cahill pg. 5). He explains that today's historical accounts were largely written by Protestant Englishmen and Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans; many historians have been discovering that not all of these works are always 100 percent reliable. He says that many of these historians have neglected the fact that without the contribution of the Irish monks of the past European civilization would not be the civilization, which we know today (Cahill pg. 5).
             Mr. Cahill's main purpose is to explain how the Irish saved civilization, but first, he sets the stage by explaining how and why the great Roman Empire fell. In the late eighte...