Why were both sides of the Civil War divide so evasive when it came to the death of Michael Collins? Why were they still trying to effect cover-ups as late as the 1960s? Determined to find the truth despite the trails of deception left by many of the key players, Gerard Murphy, a scientist, looked in detail at the evidence. Previous researchers have tended to concentrate on the reminiscences of survivors. Murphy instead focuses on information that appeared in the immediate wake of the ambush, before attempts could be made to conceal the truth. He also examines newly released material, and has carried out a forensic analysis of the ambush site based on photographic evidence of the aftermath recently discovered in a Dublin attic. These investigations have unearthed significant new evidence, overlooked for almost a century, that seriously questions the version of events currently accepted by historians.

Non-fiction Biography / history Ireland - War of Independence/Civil War Description: "Sigerson's work, obviously written from the heart, is a valuable contribution to the literature on Michael Collins, and should be available in any self-respecting Irish library. " - TIM PAT COOGAN A startling new perspective on Ireland's most notorious "cold case": the fatal shooting in 1922 of Michael Collins, Commander-in-Chief of newly-independent Ireland. Sigerson's controversial reconstruction of the ambush may be shocking to some: yet demonstrably fits the eyewitness accounts. This is the first re-examination of Collins' mysterious death in decades; carrying on where John Feehan's landmark edition of 1991 left off. It offers the most complete overview of the evidence ever published.

Based on recently-released interviews, The Squad throws a considerable amount of new light on the intelligence operations of Michael Collins.

The story of the Hales family from Bandon epitomises the whole revolutionary period in Ireland. They were involved from the establishment of the Irish Volunteers in West Cork and were closely associated with well-known revolutionary figures, including Michael Collins, Tom Barry and Liam Deasy. Both Seán and Tom were company commanders in the IRA in the area. The signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921 split the family and led to the two brothers taking opposing sides in the Civil War that would follow. Tom Hales was the most senior Republican officer on the scene of the chaotic ambush at Béal na mBláth that led to the shooting of Michael Collins. Seán Hales was himself assassinated in Dublin by Republicans, following a vote in Dáil Éireann to allow the Provisional Government to increase its powers to penalise Republican prisoners.The story of these brothers and the rest of the family gives a unique insight into life in Ireland in this tumultuous period.

THE IRISH BESTSELLER 'Ferriter has richly earned his reputation as one of Ireland's leading historians' Irish Independent 'Absorbing ... A fascinating exploration of the Civil War and its impact on Ireland and Irish politics' Irish Times In June 1922, just seven months after Sinn Féin negotiators signed a compromise treaty with representatives of the British government to create the Irish Free State, Ireland collapsed into civil war. While the body count suggests it was far less devastating than other European civil wars, it had a harrowing impact on the country and cast a long shadow, socially, economically and politically, which included both public rows and recriminations and deep, often private traumas. Drawing on many previously unpublished sources and newly released archival material, one of Ireland's most renowned historians lays bare the course and impact of the war and how this tragedy shaped modern Ireland.

The “enormously entertaining” (The Wall Street Journal) account of a shocking 1897 murder mystery that “artfully re-create[s] the era, the crime, and the newspaper wars it touched off” (The New York Times) AN EDGAR NOMINEE FOR BEST FACT CRIME • “Fascinating . . . won’t disappoint readers in search of a book like Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City.”—The Washington Post On Long Island, a farmer finds a duck pond turned red with blood. On the Lower East Side, two boys discover a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumble upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. The police are baffled: There are no witnesses, no motives, no suspects. The grisly finds that began on the afternoon of June 26, 1897, plunged detectives headlong into the era’s most perplexing murder mystery. Seized upon by battling media moguls Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, the case became a publicity circus, as their rival newspapers the World and the Journal raced to solve the crime. What emerged was a sensational love triangle and an even more sensational trial. The Murder of the Century is a rollicking tale—a rich evocation of America during the Gilded Age and a colorful re-creation of the tabloid wars that forever changed newspaper journalism.

An historical novel like none before it, A Star Called Henry has marked a new chapter in Booker Prize-winner Roddy Doyle's writing. A subversive look behind the legends of Irish republicanism, at its centre a passionate and unforgettable love story, this novel is a triumphant work of fiction. Born in the slums of Dublin in 1902, his father a one-legged whorehouse bouncer and settler of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast. By the time he can walk he's out robbing, begging, charming, often cold, always hungry, but a prince of the streets. At fourteen, already six foot two, Henry's in the General Post Office on Easter Monday 1916, a soldier in the Irish Citizen Army, fighting for freedom. A year later he's ready to die for Ireland again, a rebel, a Fenian, and, soon, a killer. With his father's wooden leg as his weapon, Henry becomes a republican legend - one of Michael Collins' boys, a cop killer, an assassin on a stolen bike, a lover.

“An extraordinary delight for a reader of any age.” —The New York Times Book Review Brian Floca explores Apollo 11’s famed moon landing with this newly expanded edition of Moonshot! Simply told, grandly shown, and now with eight additional pages of brand-new art and more in-depth information about the historic moon landing, here is the flight of Apollo 11. Here for a new generation of readers and explorers are the steady astronauts clicking themselves into gloves and helmets, strapping themselves into sideways seats. Here are their great machines in all their detail and monumentality, the ROAR of rockets, and the silence of the Moon. Here is a story of adventure and discovery—a story of leaving and returning during the summer of 1969, and a story of home, seen whole, from far away.

There is no crime in detecting and destroying in wartime the spy and informer...I have paid them back in their own coin. - Michael CollinsMichael Collins' development of a formidable intelligence network transformed, for the first time in history, the military fortunes of the Irish against the British. The Dublin Brigade of the IRA was pivotal to this defining strategy. In 1919, Collins formed members of the brigade into two Special Duties Units. They eventually joined to form his 'Squad' of assassins tasked with immobilising British intelligence. Eyewitness testimonies and war diaries lend immediacy and insight to this thrilling account of the daring espionage and killings carried out by both sides on Dublin's streets. Dominic Price reveals how the IRA developed Improvised Explosive Devices, and experimented with chemical weapons in the form of poison gas and infecting water supplies.When the Civil War erupted, the devotion of a significant cohort of the Dublin Brigade to Collins, forged during the darkest of days, was unbreakable. Many of them, identified here for the first time, formed the backbone of the Free State in key intelligence and military roles. While not shying away from the revulsions of the Civil War, neither does Price abandon the brigade's story at its conclusion. As well as revealing the disenchantment of some, who took part in the 1924 army mutiny, he exposes the personal horrors that awaited in peacetime, when psychological trauma was common. This is the stirring and poignant story of the human endeavour and suffering at the core of the Dublin Brigade's fight for Irish freedom.