This is the first complete history of the Curragh Camp, from its foundation in 1855 to the present day, under both British and Irish occupation. Dan Harvey, a military historian and an experienced senior officer, presents a compelling and fascinating narrative of the camp’s many evocative eras and episodes. This unique establishment has been key in shaping Irish history while being shaped in turn by the great national and international conflicts that it was founded to respond to: the Crimean War, the Boer War, the Great War, the Easter Rising and War of Independence are all accounted for under the banner of the British Army. The first tricolour hoisted overhead of the camp signalled no change to its level of service as the Curragh’s forces were quickly embroiled in the Irish Civil War, later oversaw the years of the modern Troubles, and forged an international role with the Irish Defence Forces. These grand narratives are interlaced with smaller yet significant tales that personalise the institution and lend vitality to the many facets that keep service, work, and a livelihood in check on world-renowned plains once covered by ‘St. Brigid’s cloak’. Prince Edward’s royal visit and training, and the ‘Wrens’ less welcome visits to the soldiers after dark – everyday and extraordinary matters are described to give the most authoritative history, compelling and meticulously written, of a camp inextricable to Ireland for over one hundred and fifty years

The astonishing, powerful debut by the winner of a 2016 Whiting Writers' Award WHEREAS her birth signaled the responsibility as mother to teach what it is to be Lakota therein the question: What did I know about being Lakota? Signaled panic, blood rush my embarrassment. What did I know of our language but pieces? Would I teach her to be pieces? Until a friend comforted, Don’t worry, you and your daughter will learn together. Today she stood sunlight on her shoulders lean and straight to share a song in Diné, her father’s language. To sing she motions simultaneously with her hands; I watch her be in multiple musics. —from “WHEREAS Statements” WHEREAS confronts the coercive language of the United States government in its responses, treaties, and apologies to Native American peoples and tribes, and reflects that language in its officiousness and duplicity back on its perpetrators. Through a virtuosic array of short lyrics, prose poems, longer narrative sequences, resolutions, and disclaimers, Layli Long Soldier has created a brilliantly innovative text to examine histories, landscapes, her own writing, and her predicament inside national affiliations. “I am,” she writes, “a citizen of the United States and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, meaning I am a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation—and in this dual citizenship I must work, I must eat, I must art, I must mother, I must friend, I must listen, I must observe, constantly I must live.” This strident, plaintive book introduces a major new voice in contemporary literature.