I read this book about 20 or 25 years ago when the "Troubles" in Ireland were still a big, tragic mess. Thank God that’s pretty much history (or at least appears to be). It’s an enlightening read about the lousy situation the Catholics in Ulster faced, what it was like to grow up in that, how the mess developed over time, how the authorities often did the absolute wrong thing, and how ordinary people almost naturally and necessarily became radicalized. Taking human nature as something relatively constant and transposing the ingredients to any other place and time, we get a pretty disturbing picture of the possibilities. Or put in another way, you can extract some general principles from the Irish troubles, look around the world, change a few terms such as Ulster to Kenya or the Balkans, and the underlying patterns are pretty consistent. It’s all too explicable. It amazes me that this Enlightenment notion of the perfectibility of human nature wasn’t among the millions killed off by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and our other 20th Century greats. In his 1962 Nobel Prize acceptance speech John Steinbeck said, “I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.” What a fool. ( )

I probably wouldn't have found this book without the aid of the excellent Left Book Club. I am so pleased that I did.

We all know that politics in the west is played by the rules of divide and conquer. This was/is clearly the game in Ireland where the threat of those horrible Catholics/Protestants is enough to get the masses to accept whatever scraps the elite choose to permit them.

This is a very well written history of the Irish 'troubles' from as near to a neutral source as one is likely to get.

WELL WORTH THE READ! ( )