After a chapter of background on the period from 1921 to 1963, it covers the ensuing period-the descent into violence, the hunger strikes, the Anglo-Irish accord, the bombers in England-to the present shaky peace process. Behind the deluge of information and opinion about the conflict, there is a straightforward and gripping story. Mr. McKittrick and Mr. McVea tell that story clearly, concisely, and, above all, fairly, avoiding intricate detail in favor of narrative pace and accessible prose. They describe and explain a lethal but fascinating time in Northern Ireland's history, which brought not only death, injury, and destruction but enormous political and social change. They close on an optimistic note, convinced that while peace-if it comes-will always be imperfect, a corner has now been decisively turned. The book includes a detailed chronology, statistical tables, and a glossary of terms.

    This books tells their story.

    Measured in terms of mortality, the Great Irish Potato Famine was the worst disaster in the nineteenth century--it claimed twice as many lives as the American Civil War. A perfect storm of bacterial infection, political greed, and religious intolerance sparked this catastrophe. But even more extraordinary than its scope were its political underpinnings, and The Graves Are Walking provides fresh material and analysis on the role that Britain's nation-building policies played in exacerbating the devastation by attempting to use the famine to reshape Irish society and character. Religious dogma, anti-relief sentiment, and racial and political ideology combined to result in an almost inconceivable disaster of human suffering.This is ultimately a story of triumph over perceived destiny: for fifty million Americans of Irish heritage, the saga of a broken people fleeing crushing starvation and remaking themselves in a new land is an inspiring story of revival.Based on extensive research and written with novelistic flair, The Graves Are Walking draws a portrait that is both intimate and panoramic, that captures the drama of individual lives caught up in an unimaginable tragedy, while imparting a new understanding of the famine's causes and consequences.

    What makes his book so valuable, however, are the quirky subjects he chooses to illustrate how history really works: the great winter freeze of 1740 and the famine that followed; crime and dueling; an emigrant voyage; evictions. These episodes get behind the historical headlines to give a glimpse of past realities that might otherwise be lost to view. The author has retained the original episodic structure of the radio programs. The result is a marvelous mosaic of the Irish past, delivered with clarity and narrative skill.

    As it chronicles the activities of members of Sinn F�in, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Cumann na mBan, and the Irish Volunteers, this compelling volume addresses a range of key questions that continue to divide historians of modern Ireland: What led people from ordinary backgrounds to fight for Irish freedom? What did they think they could achieve given the superior forces arrayed against them? What kind of republic were they willing to kill and die for? Fearghal McGarry deftly interweaves the oral history of the rank-and-file revolutionaries of the Rising into a comprehensive, yet powerfully affecting narrative--one that The Boston Globe called "vivid and compelling" and "a poignant mosaic of idealism, bravery, and humanity."

    With clarity and objectivity, Coogan examines the IRA's origins, its foreign links, bombing campaigns, hunger strikes and sectarian violence and its role in the latest attempts to bring peace to Northern Ireland. Meticulously researched and featuring interviews with past and present members of the organization, this is a compelling account of modern Irish history.

    Instead, he found hundreds. In this book he tells these storiesat a painful and perhaps incomplete reconciliation.Douglas Murray is a best-selling author and award-winning political journalist based in London, England.

    All of these conflicts, including the hostilities between Arabs and Israelis that have flared yet again, come down, in a sense, to the extent to which the Middle East will continue to live with its political inheritance: the arrangements, unities, and divisions imposed upon the region by the Allies after the First World War.In A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin reveals how and why the Allies came to remake the geography and politics of the Middle East, drawing lines on an empty map that eventually became the new countries of Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. Focusing on the formative years of 1914 to 1922, when all-even an alliance between Arab nationalism and Zionism-seemed possible he raises questions about what might have been done differently, and answers questions about why things were done as they were. The current battle for a Palestinian homeland has its roots in these events of 85 years ago.

    Tuchman brings the era to vivid life: the decline of the Edwardian aristocracy; the Anarchists of Europe and America; Germany and its self-depicted hero, Richard Strauss; Diaghilev’s Russian ballet and Stravinsky’s music; the Dreyfus Affair; the Peace Conferences in The Hague; and the enthusiasm and tragedy of Socialism, epitomized by the assassination of Jean Jaurès on the night the Great War began and an epoch came to a close.

    Britain, according to Ferguson, entered into war based on naïve assumptions of German aims—and England's entry into the war transformed a Continental conflict into a world war, which they then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement. The war was not inevitable, Ferguson argues, but rather the result of the mistaken decisions of individuals who would later claim to have been in the grip of huge impersonal forces. That the war was wicked, horrific, inhuman,is memorialized in part by the poetry of men like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but also by cold statistics. More British soldiers were killed in the first day of the Battle of the Somme than Americans in the Vietnam War; indeed, the total British fatalities in that single battle—some 420,000—exceeds the entire American fatalities for both World Wars. And yet, as Ferguson writes, while the war itself was a disastrous folly, the great majority of men who fought it did so with enthusiasm. Ferguson vividly brings back to life this terrifying period, not through dry citation of chronological chapter and verse but through a series of brilliant chapters focusing on key ways in which we now view the First World War.For anyone wanting to understand why wars are fought, why men are willing to fight them, and why the world is as it is today, there is no sharper nor more stimulating guide than Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War.

    Dan Breen was to become the best known of them. At first they were condemned on all sides. They became outlaws and My Fight describes graphically what life was like 'on the run, ' with 'an army at one's heels and a thousand pounds on one's head'. A burning belief in their cause sustained them through many a dark and bitter day and slowly support came from the people

    In this remarkable and intimate account, author G. J. Meyer draws on exhaustive research to bring to life the story of how the Great War reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of the world we live in today.

    His authoritative & comprehensive history is masterly in its detail & judicious analysis. A classic in its field, this is essential reading for anyone attempting to understand the complex historical forces that have shaped Ireland.Preface1. Who were Irishmen?2 The first Irish republicans3. The union4 The tragedy of home rule5. Outselves aloneReferencesSelect BibliographyIndex

    Toby Harnden has stripped away the myth and propaganda associated with South Armagh to produce one of the most compelling and important books of the Troubles. Drawing on secret documents and interviews in South Armagh's recent history, he tells the inside story of how the IRA came close to bringing the British state to its knees. Additionally, for the first time, the identities of the men behind the South Quay and Manchester bombings are revealed.

    Covering the twelve months of 1916, eminent historian Keith Jeffery uses twelve moments from a range of locations and shows how they reverberated around the world. As well as discussing better-known battles such as Gallipoli, Verdun and the Somme, Jeffery examines Dublin, for the Easter Rising, East Africa, the Italian front, Central Asia and Russia, where the killing of Rasputin exposed the internal political weakness of the country's empire. And, in charting a wide range of wartime experience, he studies the 'intelligence war', naval engagements at Jutland and elsewhere, as well as the political consequences that ensued from the momentous US presidential election. Using an extraordinary range of military, social and cultural sources, and relating the individual experiences on the ground to wider developments, these are the stories lost to history, the conflicts that spread beyond the sphere of Europe and the moments that transformed the war.