I found this work extremely challenging, in both a negative and a positive sense. The history of Northern Ireland and the "Troubles" is very complex indeed, and this work does a good job of tracking the major permutations of the issues. Although I grew up when most of this was going on, I had little understanding of what was really going on. But the author--perhaps in the name of brevity--does not explain everything as clearly as I would have liked. It definitely helps if you already have a solid grasp of the basic outline of the events, and are looking for a refresher on finer details. A map would definitely have helped, and for some reason it was not always clear to me which side he was talking about. Still, it would be difficult to imagine a more thorough outline of this most important facet of international history. ( )

Very good - genuinely an introduction to the topic, and quite a comprehensive one, that manages to tell the reader what happened and balance this with useful context and analysis. ( )

This is a tiny book, only five chapters. I realize that to minimize the text something would have to be omitted. What actually is lost is the entire meaning of the events of the creation and troubles of Northern Ireland. For one thing, no map to orient yourself. The author clearly adores his thesaurus, and uses obscure words for no reason. His time periods alternate by decades, and while he relates anecdotal events, he doesn't tie them together in any sort of cohesive way so as to make the subject understandable. This was a college textbook for Irish Studies, but Google was much more helpful. ( )