In his treatment of Redmond, Joseph P. Finnan demonstrates the multiple identities of the Irish Parliamentary Party as nationalist, liberal, and Catholic. He looks at Home Rule as part of a federal solution to the Irish question within the United Kingdom, the reasons for the failure of Redmond's war policies, and the collapse of the Irish Parliamentary Party as part of the wider phenomenon of the decline of liberalism during the Great War. As he looks at Irish nationalism in its worldwide context, Finnan also shows how Redmond's handling of organizational problems in America sets the pattern for his later handling of similar problems in Ireland.

An invaluable reference work of which only 750 copies were originally printed, providing a remarkably complete list of titles published during this most troubled period in Irish history, the period stretching from the passing of the Home Rule Bill in Britain's Parliament, through the raising of rival Unionist and Nationalist volunteer militias in northern and southern Ireland, the Great War, the Easter Rising, and the guerilla war against British forces which led to Irish independence. An incredibly useful book, providing a jumping-off board for anyone wanting to research the political and military history of the era. Publications are listed alphabetically by brief chronological period.

Dermot Meleady's authoritative second part of his full-length biography of John Redmond, the first to be published in 80 years, begins in 1901 shortly after his election as chairman of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the Westminster Parliament, and ends with his death in 1918. The book details Redmond's reconstruction of the Party following its reunification after the destructive decade-long Parnell split, and his refashioning of it as a political weapon for winning Irish Home Rule. It follows his role in successfully passing the Conservatives 1903 Land Purchase Act which greatly accelerated the transfer of land ownership from Irish landlords to Irish farmers. His successes and failures in the years of the 1906 10 Liberal Government are also fully documented, but when the Liberals move in 1911 to remove the House of Lords veto, the stage is set for the passage of the third Home Rule Bill, the paramount goal of Redmond s endeavours. The events of the following turbulent five years the increasingly militant resistance of Ulster Unionism to Home Rule, the outbreak of the Great War and the unforeseen Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 as much a blow against Home Rule as against British rule cast him down from triumphant prime-minister-in waiting to the status of Ireland s lost leader. Through exhaustive research in Redmond's personal papers, Dermot Meleady has produced the definitive story of one of the most tragic figures in twentieth-century Irish political history.