Genius of Guinness: The Enduring Legacy of an Irish Dynasty

by Michele Guinness

When Arthur Guinness sunk his meager savings into a small brewery on the banks of the River Liffey in Dublin, he could not have foreseen the dynasty of brewers and bankers that would carry on his family name. But Guinness also produced another kind of spirit, an extraordinary line of missionary explorers, clerics, and pioneer social workers. More famous in his day than his brewing cousins, teetotaler Henry Grattan Guinness forsook his earthly inheritance to preach the gospel to thousands and witnessed true revival. His children and grandchildren ventured to unknown lands, risked disease and death, and fearlessly confronted Western governments about the mistreatment of natives in their colonies. They also introduced social and moral reforms to the poverty-stricken East End of London. The tension between God and Mammon is a recurrent theme in a family pulled in two directions by earthly wealth and heavenly reward. Spanning two hundred years and five generations of perhaps the most famous family in the world, this history chronicles the Guinness family's meteoric rise to its bitterest tragedies, its fame and its reversals of fortune. Michele Guinness, with inside access to diaries, letters, and personal recollections, tells the story of the Guinness family from their inauspicious eighteenth-century beginnings down to the present day.

Genres: History

300 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2005

Reviews

[Ralph Cann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book to get a more detailed account of the side of the Guinness family that became church leaders and missionaries. Also, more open about the warts of certain Guinness family members. Very informative.

[Kathryn Pulman · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2 stars

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book. It's a gripping story of a giant of Christian missions. Henry Grattan Guinness rubbed shoulders with some of the most celebrated Christians of his day - Hudson Taylor, C H Spurgeon, etc. but is relatively unknown 100 years after his death. Read this book and you'll be inspired to reach the lost for Jesus Christ.

[Gill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book written about my husband's ancestors, which I found very interesting indeed. What an incredible family, not only of brewers, but of missionaries and bankers too.

[Brenton · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Guinness family is one of Ireland's most famous. One branch of the family became famous for it's brew, the other for it's teetotalism and Christian missions work.