As Ireland enters its own multicultural age, historians will surely begin showing greater curiosity about how previous ethnic minorities lived in Ireland. The most famous figure, of course, is Joyce's Jewish character Leopold Bloom, the main protagonist in "Ulysses." In his new book "Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce: A Socioeconomic History," Cormac O'Grada explores the rise and fall of a vibrant Irish community. O'Grada, Professor of Economics at University College Dublin, focuses largely on Dublin's Little Jerusalem, which drew notice in the 1870s when Lithuanian Jewish immigrants began settling there. The community thrived until around the 1940s. O'Grada, whose other books include Black'47 and Beyond, has identified what might seem to be an obscure topic and made it highly relevant for contemporary readers. ($35 / 320 pages / Princeton University Press)