John Doyle's excellent memoir "A Great Feast of Light" combines recent history with coming-of- age angst and ultimately captures how Ireland was transformed when TV became more widespread in the early 1960s. Doyle's portrait of everyday life in Nenagh, Tipperary alone is vivid. He skillfully expands his narrative outward, exploring sex, poverty, civil rights and more. All of these topics are seen through the prism of television, how it depicted, reflected and ultimately changed Ireland and the world. The "boob tube," in Doyle's mind, delivered subtly subversive messages to Irish audiences, changing a culture stubbornly clinging (Doyle believes) to the past. Who would have believed "Gunsmoke," "Monty Python" and "The Man From UNCLE" could do such a thing? But if you don't believe it, read "A Great Feast of Light." ($15.95 / 321 pages / Carroll & Graf)