In February, 1919, three Irish revolutionary prisoners walked out of Lincoln Jail without having dug a tunnel or fired a shot. The escape was the culmination of months of planning that involved some of the greatest intellects in Ireland and Britain. Peter DeLoughry (1882–1931) was one of the founding fathers of modern Ireland. His most famous achievement was to make a key that allowed three of his fellow prisoners in Lincoln Jail to escape in February 1919. The key became a symbol of the success that could be achieved by co-operation and hard work. However, as the years went on, the key became a matter of poisonous dispute between DeLoughry and Michael Collins on one side and Eamon de Valera and Harry Boland on the other. The key emerged as a symbol of the hatred and bitterness that welled up and overflowed in the nascent years of the Irish Free State. De Loughrey was also Mayor of Kilkenny for more than six consecutive years, a record not surpassed before or since. He served in the upper and lower houses of the Irish Parliament where he became embroiled in issues such as divorce, film censorship and, most important of all, the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which he championed. He lived through an age of political and social turbulence; his childhood and adulthood bridged the time of Parnell and the birth of the Irish Free State.

'Peter's Key' tells the story of the Irish patriot and politician, Peter de Loughrey, who masterminded the daring escape that sprang De Valera from Lincoln Jail in 1919. It was the most creative jail escape of all time, reports of which knocked stories off the front pages of newspapers throughout the world.

Mulligan's is more than a Dublin pub; it is an Irish cultural phenomenon. It has a unique and colourful history, spanning over two hundred years. Mulligan's has hosted the famous - Judy Garland, Seamus Heaney, Con Houlihan, James Joyce, John F. Kennedy - and, indeed, the infamous - police arrested a kidnapper there. Quirkiness pervades its atmosphere. The ashes of a US tourist are interred in its clock. Barmen have seen ghosts on the premises. For decades, performers at the Theatre Royal thronged to Mulligan's, mingling with journalists from 'The Irish Press' who smoked, fumed and interviewed celebrities in it. This fascinating book captures the atmosphere and essence of an Irish institution, loved by both natives and tourists alike.

Veteran IRA leader Ernie O’Malley criticised County Kilkenny as being ‘slack’ during the War of Independence, but this fascinating new study of the period, by historian Eoin Swithin Walsh, challenges that view and reveals that Kilkenny was truly at the forefront of the struggle for Irish freedom. No Kilkenny citizen escaped the revolutionary era untouched, especially during the turmoil that followed the Easter Rising of 1916, the upheaval of the War of Independence and the tumultuous Civil War. Key personalities, revolutionary organisations and dramatic events in Kilkenny illuminate the country-wide struggle. Not to be forgotten, the lives of the ‘ordinary’ men and women of the county are explored, emphasising a life beyond politics and conflict. The listing of Kilkenny fatalities during the War of Independence is examined and, for the first time, combatants and civilians who died during the Truce and the Civil War are recorded, revealing an even more deadly conflict than previously believed. Presenting a complete history of the county in the opening decades of the twentieth century – including the use of previously unseen archival material – Kilkenny: In Times of Revolution, 1900–1923 is an indispensable contribution to the literature on the turbulent birth of the Irish nation.

The gripping story of the years that ended the Great War and launched Europe and America onto the roller coaster of the twentieth century, Crucible is filled with all-too-human tales of exuberant dreams, dark fears, and the absurdities of chance In Petrograd, a fire is lit. The Tsar is packed off to Siberia. A rancorous Russian exile returns to proclaim a workers' revolution. In America, black soldiers who have served their country in Europe demand their rights at home. An Austrian war veteran trained by the German army to give rousing speeches against the Bolshevik peril begins to rail against the Jews. A solar eclipse turns a former patent clerk into a celebrity. An American reporter living the high life in Paris searches out a new literary style. Lenin and Hitler, Josephine Baker and Ernest Hemingway, Rosa Luxemburg and Mustafa Kemal--these are some of the protagonists in this dramatic panorama of a world in turmoil. Revolutions and civil wars erupt across Europe. A red scare hits America. Women win the vote. Marching tunes are syncopated into jazz. The real becomes surreal. Encompassing both tragedy and humor, the celebrated author of 1913 brings immediacy and intimacy to this moment of deep historical transformation that molded the world we would come to inherit.

A teenage boy from the Texas heartland is drawn into a comedy whirlwind; rolling up his sleeves in the fight to publish the most outrageous book ever written. Set Wright blazes a trail through suffocating censors and puritanical organizations to help lift the US ban on James Joyce's Ulysses. The battle culminates in the greatest literary trial of the twentieth century; pitting the publishers, Random House, against the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which views Ulysses as scandalous and obscene. Amid the trampoline exhilarations and swamp-sucking drama of the court case, Set's odyssey leads him to first love and having to make a cliff-edge decision both surprising and revelatory.

A wide-ranging collection of writings on emerging political structures in cyberspace. In Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias, Peter Ludlow extends the approach he used so successfully in High Noon on the Electronic Frontier, offering a collection of writings that reflects the eclectic nature of the online world, as well as its tremendous energy and creativity. This time the subject is the emergence of governance structures within online communities and the visions of political sovereignty shaping some of those communities. Ludlow views virtual communities as laboratories for conducting experiments in the construction of new societies and governance structures. While many online experiments will fail, Ludlow argues that given the synergy of the online world, new and superior governance structures may emerge. Indeed, utopian visions are not out of place, provided that we understand the new utopias to be fleeting localized "islands in the Net" and not permanent institutions. The book is organized in five sections. The first section considers the sovereignty of the Internet. The second section asks how widespread access to resources such as Pretty Good Privacy and anonymous remailers allows the possibility of "Crypto Anarchy"—essentially carving out space for activities that lie outside the purview of nation states and other traditional powers. The third section shows how the growth of e-commerce is raising questions of legal jurisdiction and taxation for which the geographic boundaries of nation-states are obsolete. The fourth section looks at specific experimental governance structures evolved by online communities. The fifth section considers utopian and anti-utopian visions for cyberspace. Contributors Richard Barbrook, John Perry Barlow, William E. Baugh Jr., David S. Bennahum, Hakim Bey, David Brin, Andy Cameron, Dorothy E. Denning, Mark Dery, Kevin Doyle, Duncan Frissell, Eric Hughes, Karrie Jacobs, David Johnson, Peter Ludlow, Timothy C. May, Jennifer L. Mnookin, Nathan Newman, David G. Post, Jedediah S. Purdy, Charles J. Stivale