Mick: The Real Michael Collins

Few leaders in history have been as mythologized as Michael Collins. Before his death at 31, he had fought in the Easter Rising, organized the IRA and out-spied British intelligence, negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and run the first independent government in Ireland. Peter Hart’s groundbreaking biography restores humanity to this mythical figure. Drawing on previously unknown sources, delving into Collins’s pre-revolutionary past, and assessing the methods—and the costs—of his rise to power, Mick reveals a man of often ruthless ambition, more politician than soldier, whose friendships went no farther than his interests. A work as thrilling as it is authoritative.

Peter Hart is the Canada Research Chair of Irish Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland and the author of The I.R.A. and Its Enemies (winner of the ChristopherEwart-Biggs Memorial Prize) and two other books on modern Irish history.