In Albert Reynolds: Risktaker for Peace, Conor Lenihan takes the reader on a journey through the former Taoiseach’s fascinating life. From his early days in Roscommon, Reynolds’ determination and hard work saw him rise from a humble clerical job with Irish Rail to become one of Ireland’s best-known showbiz promoters. But it is as creator of the template for peace on the island of Ireland that he, deservedly, will be best remembered. Reynolds’ extraordinary progress from the cut-throat world of business to local politics, and, ultimately, government ministries, was driven by the entrepreneurial spirit and impatience that became the hallmark of his success and his failure. Appointed as Taoiseach in 1992, by 1994 he had been drummed out of office, yet in that brief period he confounded his critics by fast-tracking an end to the violence of the Troubles, with the IRA and Loyalist ceasefires. In the first complete biography of Reynolds, former Minister of State Conor Lenihan delivers an insider’s account that reveals the courageous personal risks Reynolds took to create the template for peace in Ireland, and the highs and lows of a tempestuous, risk taking life.

Ireland's eighth Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, tells how his dynamic, can-do approach allowed a boy from the village of Roosky, County Roscommon, to build a ballroom empire with his brother Jim, to found a multi-million-pound company and to make a profound and lasting contribution to Irish politics.

“A tour de force . . . a top-notch study of a powerful couple negotiating the shifting socioeconomic world of the New South and early corporate America.”—Journal of American History Separately they were formidable—together they were unstoppable. Despite their intriguing lives and the deep impact they had on their community and region, the story of Richard Joshua Reynolds and Katharine Smith Reynolds has never been fully told. Now Michele Gillespie provides a sweeping account of how R. J. and Katharine succeeded in realizing their American dreams. From relatively modest beginnings, R. J. launched the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which would eventually develop two hugely profitable products, Prince Albert pipe tobacco and Camel cigarettes. His marriage in 1905 to Katharine Smith, a dynamic woman thirty years his junior, marked the beginning of a unique partnership that went well beyond the family. As a couple, the Reynoldses conducted a far-ranging social life and, under Katharine’s direction, built Reynolda House, a breathtaking estate and model farm. Katharine and R. J. Reynolds “is an engrossing study of a power couple extraordinaire . . . Telling us much about an unusual relationship, Michele Gillespie also provides a new way to understand how the post-Reconstruction New South elite helped construct business structures, social relations, and racial hierarchies. The result is an important addition to our understanding of the industrial South in the North Carolina Piedmont heartland” (William A. Link, author of The Paradox of Southern Progressivism). “Ms. Gillespie uses Katharine’s life and work as a kind of prism through which to view the prejudices and predilections of Southern culture in the 1910s and 1920s.”—The Wall Street Journal

This is a dispassionate examination of the viability of a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, based on the politics of Israel, Palestine and the United States. It includes instructive case studies from South Africa in Namibia and the Irish claim to Northern Ireland. The results of Israeli elections from 2001 to 2013 are analyzed (with the conclusion that the Likud will be in any government coalition for at least the midterm future, giving it a veto over policy). A chapter examining the history and ideology of the secular right over the last 90 years follows. There are three chapters of case studies: the Likud withdrawal from the Sinai in 1979-1982 and from Gaza in 2005, the withdrawal of South Africa from Namibia in 1988-1989, and the dropping of Ireland's constitutional claim to Northern Ireland in 1998 under a Fianna Fail government--the same party that wrote the constitution in 1937. A chapter examines Palestinian politics since the mandatory era and another, the American-Israeli alliance and American politics. A concluding chapter draws lessons from the case studies and the analysis.