Anyone who wants to understand the complex dynamics of the culture of Ulster and Northern Ireland would do well to include this very readable book in their study.

Step by step the planned revolution unfolds. The Irish, preparing pikes, organizing, and plotting betrayal against themselves.

Treachery and battle. Summer soldiers is a sometines exausting account of the failed rebellion against the Ascendancy.

This really is a minute to minute account of what happened.

That is this books best quality. It's so detailed it's hard to really accept. But the footnotes are there, and they reveal not only a failed rebellion (that is still relevant to the IRA and the RUC) but the details of how mass planning under duress comes together....and falls apart.

Essential for any student of Irish HIstory. Essential for anyone who needs to understand the rebelious masses. Essential to anyone interested in contemporary Irish politics.

This was the event that created todays nightmare in Ireland.

well researched book good biography. hope to see more detailed book on the same subject. craigavon should also be researched to see his important part in the crisus

A.T.Q. Stewart established his well deserved reputation as an objective, erudite scholar with this small book. Unlike many academic historians however,he also writes well. He treats his subject not as a sounding board for a trendy, modern "ism", but instead as an objective event in the past. He examines not only what happened, but why it happened. This volume examines the rise of Ulster Loyalist resistance to Irish Nationalist "Home Rule", which the Northern Irish Loyalists rightly saw as the short road to independence for Ireland from the Empire. Their threatened armed "rebellion" against the British government so as to (ironically) achieve their aim of remaining British, ultimately set in motion the events of 1916 and later 1968/69, which sadly continue up to this very evening. Stewart treats his subject dispassionatly and with great insight and detail. At the same time Stewart describes events almost as a jounalist would have done. One can almost see the gun runners unloading the rifles off the docks in the darkness from his narration. Ultimately, he also describes how the participants faired. The nascent U.V.F. marched off to meet their doom on the Somme. The peaceful Nationalists were ultimately politically outflanked by Sinn Fein who revolted in 1916, a mere six weeks before their counterparts went over the top in Flanders. The British Officers who threatened to resign at Curragh Barracks rather than enforce what they saw as an unpatriotic law, lost not only their lives but their world. In short, if you are interested in this aspect of British history, this is a book well worth having.