How the Irish Saved the World.

Part of a wider project that the author calls The Hinges of History, where he sets to study and "retell the story of the Western world as the story of the great gift-givers, those who entrusted to our keeping one or another of the singular treasures that make up the patrimony of the West" (a project that, in principle, also includes a second volume titled The Gifts of the Jews), this book tells us the story of how the Irish monks managed to keep the heritage of Western civilization (i.e., the Greek and Roman classics, as well as the Jewish and early Christian works) to pass it to posterity.

Technical description:
Title: How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe.
Author: Thomas Cahill.
Publisher: Doubleday
Edition: First paperback edition, New York (USA), March 1996.
Pages: 249 pages, including index and illustrations.
ISBN: 0-385-41849-3