Robert Kee's name should be recognizable by any avid reader of WWII POW stories, and I was delighted when I saw that he had written a book about his experiences.

Starting with his being shot down and ending shortly after the camp is evacuated by the Nazis, Kee's work is a little more introspective than many of the other POW books. He concentrates less on the escaping and more on his feelings and impressions of what he saw and experienced. As such, his work gives the reader a new perspective, an excellent feel for what it was like to be a POW. He even details things that other books have tended to gloss over (and that I always wondered about): how bad the latrine really was, what it was like to live in such close proximity with others, and just how bad the lack of food was, to name a few.

Anyone interested in WWII, war, or POW stories will enjoy this book. I believe that even casual readers will find it an enlightening read, and I fully recommend it to anyone.

The complex politics of the Irish revolt against the English is brought into a new light by Robert Kee. Kee manages to describe the failures and successes of Irish nationalism over the centuries in an exceedingly readable book. The Green Flag consists of three volumes ending in 1973 and so does not cover the recent conflict. It is still one of the best books ever written on Irish history.

This is a famous and well reputed book. It has been in print now for almost 30 years-deservedly so I might add. I suspect it will still be in print another 30 years from now.
Robert Kee was a journalist and a famous World War 2 P.O.W. escapee. He writes lucidly and with great style, eloquence even. Yet above all his books are a darn good read. This book is vividly written, fleshed out with characters and facts that are dispassionatly but richly detailed.
This book follows the course of Irish nationalism from the distant past of the Tudor wars and Anglo-Scottish Settlements up through the rise of DeVelera.
Its true strength is in parts two and three which recount, in great detail, the growth of Irish nationalist sentiment (and rebellion) and land reform/Catholic emancipation, during the 19th Century. Kee demonstrates clearly the ever so slight, but vital, strand of personal connection that linked Wolfe Tones' United Irishmen to Emmet, Parnell, the Fenians and eventually the I.R.A..
Part three details the rise of the Nationalist cause in the wake of Parnell's fall and the rise of the I.R.B./I.R.A. in the late Victorian era up through the Civil war of the 1920s. This book painted very clearly the horror of the Black and Tan war as well as the subsequently even more nasty Irish civil war.
Up until the 1970s a great many people in Ireland would not even speak to each other because of the bitterness engendered by the latter conflict. It spawned Ireland's two major parties and the emotions, recriminations and even hatred caused by the Collins/DeVelera conflict still has significant effect today. This era also shaped the course of the present day three I.R.A.s (Provisional,"Real" and "Stickie").
This book does not deal with the Present Ulster 'troubles' at all. But you can not understand them, nor modern Ireland without reading this book.
Above all, this book was written in a 'neutral' fashion, by an outsider, who deeply loved his subject. It lacks the usual bombast of many other slanted histories. At the same time none of the drama, emotion, glory nor hatred are lost in the telling.
To illustrate what I mean by the above review: in 1987 I asked a series of Irish politicians of all persuasions what history book would still be in print in 2037 and what volumes would they use if they had to teach Irish history to a class at Harvard. Every politician (except the Rev.Ian Paisley) mentioned this book.

Robert Kee's "Ireland: A History" is, simply put, a fine introductory overview of modern Ireland. By "modern" I refer to the time from a bit before the Viking invasion (roughly 797 C.E.), through the Free State to the founding of the Republic and into "The Troubles" of today. For my money, the book's major flaw was its brief, superficial treatment of ancient Celtic Ireland. There is so much more to Ireland's Gaelic past than Kee covers that one will need other books to fill this gap. As a dual national -- I'm an Irish and a U.S. citizen -- I did not really "need" Kee's book to learn of modern or ancient Ireland, or the supplementary works I later bought to cover the pre-Viking material his "Ireland: A History" did not; I already knew a fair bit about this as a function of my birth. [A Dublin-born Irishman gave me Kee's book to read while I lived in Cyprus, where English-language books are very dear, and one reads what one may already have read or known to save money.] As a further note, ultra-Republican friends of mine scoff at what they characterize as Kee's "royalist/loyalist" leanings, dismissing out of hand anything he has to say as not quite "shamrock green" enough for a "True Republican" to be citing him as a source on anything Irish. I personally did not find Kee a propagandist for the Crown, so do not subscribe out of hand to this IRA carping. I can grouse, however, at Kee's or his editors' failure to state in which Dublin museum hangs the heartbreaking painting of "The Flight of the Earls," found on page 38 of the book. On one occasion, I'd sought out the painting in the National Gallery in Dublin, only to learn it hung in another museum -- which was closed the day I went after it. Notwithstanding this, in my humble opinion, for those not of Irish extraction or citizenship (or ultra-Republican bent), Kee's book is a good, easily readable, healthy introduction to the Emerald Isle. It is devoid of any blarney-sentimental cliches or slanderous stereotyping of the "glib, gab-gifted, Guinness-gulping" Irishman. And it pulls no punches at Britain's guilt for its arguably deliberate genocide of the Irish in the Great Famine of 1845-49 and those lesser ones that grass-stained starving Irish mouths and blood-stained the 19th century. But it will fill in only so many blanks in one's understanding of that ageless island and its early people, with their lost-in-mists religions, languages, superstitions, culture and monuments. Those wanting more will have to buy other works, such as Peter Beresford Ellis' "The Ancient World of the Celts," for instance. Overall, I found Kee's "Ireland: A History" a good survey course in Ireland, so much so that I bought it as a gift for a friend of Irish extraction, who'd developed a keen interest in tracing his own roots -- and in applying for Irish citizenship. On balance, Kee's book is worth the money and the read.
Anthony O'Neill Miller

THIS IS A VERY GOOD HISTORY OF IRELAND. IT TAKES YOU FROM THE EARLY BEGINNINGS TO THE PRESENT IN A FLOWING, INTERESTING WAY.
IT IS OBJECTIVE IN ITS DEALING WITH THE MANY INTERNAL PROBLEMS
IRELAND HAD AND STILL HAS WITH ENGLAND. IT IS A WONDERFUL WAY TO UNDERSTAND BOTH THE IRISH FEELINGS ABOUT INDEPENDENCE AND THE
FEELING THE BRITISH HAVE ABOUT THIS INDEPENDENCE. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.......

A wonderful piece of literature, which has already helped my A-Level studies

Hans Kirst's officers and officer candidates are chillingly ordinary guys at an officers' training school near the end of World War II. The training officers go through the motions of readying potential officers as fodder for the war effort. The training officers are quite a mix: some have enormous but fragile egos, wife and girlfriend problems, or are in denial about their distate for women but admiration for young men, flout the rules of command, or show great compassion. The young cadets are jokers, followers, outsiders; some are for the Fuehrer, others are wholly indifferent, and others actually dislike Hitler. The constant jockeying for position has its fatal attractions; when a training officer is killed during an exercise, another young officer, Lieutenant Kraft, is given the thankless task of determining whether it was an accident or murder. His path of discovery and the decisions he makes expose the silence and complicity of even the "good" German officers in the horrific policies of the Fuehrer.

A very clever look in the moral and ethical void of the Third Reich while following the stained tragic figure of Lt Kraft. Kraft is given the task of finding the truth behind an accidental explosion at the officer school which claims the life of an experienced officer. A delicious tale of intrigue and suspense follow until, like a runaway train, the book comes to its inevitable, tear wrenching conclusion.

This edited book, which is composed of six chapters, provides a very nice discussion of the international or global political economy in the post-Cold War era. It is not a book for everyone, though: most of the chapters are written from a "critical" (as in Critical Theory) perspective, and some are extremely abstract and abtruse. Still, for those who wish to get a deeper, theoretical understanding of globalization and the world economy, this is a book for you. One of the most interesting aspects of the book, which is reflected in several of the chapters, is the discussion of how Karl Polanyi's ideas about the 'double movement' can be used to analyze the global political economy today. James Rosenau's chapter, in this regard, is particularly interesting. Other contributors, all of whom are prominent scholars in the field, include Bjorn Hettne, Robert Cox, Stephen Gill, Kees van der Pijl and Yoshikazu Sakamoto. Cox's chapter entitled "Critical Political Economy" is especially useful as an introduction to the relationship between Critical Theory and IPE.

Kee's book is an excellent source of information for anyone interested in the year before the war. It is basically a summary of the headlines of the year, mostly from English newspapers and a few from the U.S. The book is not an in-depth look into the characters and events of the time, but an important chronological overview, including stories of human interest as well as European politics. As Kee explains, we often having trouble remembering that those living in 1939 had no way of knowing what would happen the following week or month or year. Kee gives us the opportunity to relive the year as if it were the first time. The book dies down after the invasion of Poland, and ends without a climax, as the year ended.