The Irish Civil War and Society sheds new light on the social currents shaping the Irish Civil War, from the 'politics of respectability' behind animosities and discourses; to the intersection of social conflicts with political violence; to the social dimensions of the war's messy aftermath.

"They will melt like snowflakes in the sun," said one observer of nineteenth-century Irish emigrants to America. Not only did they not melt, they formed one of the most extensive and persistent ethnic subcultures in American history. Dennis Clark now offers an insightful analysis of the social means this group has used to perpetuate its distinctiveness amid the complexity of American urban life. Basing his study on family stories, oral interviews, organizational records, census data, radio scripts, and the recollections of revolutionaries and intellectuals, Clark offers an absorbing panorama that shows how identity, organization, communication, and leadership have combined to create the Irish-American tradition. In his pages we see gifted storytellers, tough dockworkers, scribbling editors, and colorful actresses playing their roles in the Irish-American saga. As Clark shows, the Irish have defended and extended their self-image by cultivating their ethnic identity through transmission of family memories and by correcting community portrayals of themselves in the press and theatre. They have strengthened their ethnic ties by mutual association in the labor force and professions and in response to social problems. And they have created a network of communications ranging from 150 years of Irish newspapers to America's longest-running ethnic radio show and a circuit of university teaching about Irish literature and history. From this framework of subcultural activity has arisen a fascinating gallery of leadership that has expressed and symbolized the vitality of the Irish-American experience. Although Clark draws his primary material from Philadelphia, he relates it to other cities to show that even though Irish communities have differed they have shared common fundamentals of social development. His study constitutes a pathbreaking theoretical explanation of the dynamics of Irish-American life.

There is no crime in detecting and destroying in wartime the spy and informer...I have paid them back in their own coin. - Michael CollinsMichael Collins' development of a formidable intelligence network transformed, for the first time in history, the military fortunes of the Irish against the British. The Dublin Brigade of the IRA was pivotal to this defining strategy. In 1919, Collins formed members of the brigade into two Special Duties Units. They eventually joined to form his 'Squad' of assassins tasked with immobilising British intelligence. Eyewitness testimonies and war diaries lend immediacy and insight to this thrilling account of the daring espionage and killings carried out by both sides on Dublin's streets. Dominic Price reveals how the IRA developed Improvised Explosive Devices, and experimented with chemical weapons in the form of poison gas and infecting water supplies.When the Civil War erupted, the devotion of a significant cohort of the Dublin Brigade to Collins, forged during the darkest of days, was unbreakable. Many of them, identified here for the first time, formed the backbone of the Free State in key intelligence and military roles. While not shying away from the revulsions of the Civil War, neither does Price abandon the brigade's story at its conclusion. As well as revealing the disenchantment of some, who took part in the 1924 army mutiny, he exposes the personal horrors that awaited in peacetime, when psychological trauma was common. This is the stirring and poignant story of the human endeavour and suffering at the core of the Dublin Brigade's fight for Irish freedom.

Follows the political, economic, and social development of Ireland from the pagan past to the contemporary religious strife and hope for reconciliation.