On the morning of 21 November 1920, Jane Boyle walked to Sunday Mass in the church where she would be married five days later. That afternoon she went with her fiancé to watch Tipperary and Dublin play a Gaelic football match at Croke Park. Across the city fourteen men lay dead in their beds after a synchronised IRA attack designed to cripple British intelligence services in Ireland. Trucks of police and military rumbled through the city streets as hundreds of people clamoured at the metal gates of Dublin Castle seeking refuge. Some of them were headed for Croke Park. Award-winning journalist and author Michael Foley recounts the extraordinary story of Bloody Sunday in Croke Park and the 90 seconds of shooting that changed Ireland forever. In a deeply intimate portrait he tells for the first time the stories of those killed, the police and military personnel who were in Croke Park that day, and the families left shattered in its aftermath, all against the backdrop of a fierce conflict that stretched from the streets of Dublin and the hedgerows of Tipperary to the halls of Westminster. Updated with new information and photographs.

Groundbreaking reassessment of the role played by armour, weapons and heraldry in medieval warfare, showing their cultural as well as military significance. `A penetrating investigation of medieval martial display... The reader is struck by its originality, and by its sophisticated and critical interpretative engagement with historical and literary sources. Particularly notable is the author's subtle exploration of the function of armour: not only its practical role, but as a form of display... A refreshingly different approach to the world of the medieval combatant and his place within that "host of many colours" that was a medieval army, it adds a new dimension to our understanding of medieval warfare.' Dr ANDREW AYTON, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Hull The medieval battlefield was a place of spectacle and splendour. The fully-armed knight, bedecked in his vivid heraldic colours, mounted on his great charger, riding out beneath his brightly-painted banner, is a stock image of war and the warrior in the middle ages. Yet too often the significance of such display has been ignored or dismissed as the empty preening of a militaristic social elite. Drawing on a broad range of source material and using innovative historical approaches, this book completely re-evaluates the way that such men and their weapons were viewed, showing that martial display was a vital part of the way in which war was waged in the middle ages. It maintains that heraldry and livery served not only to advertise a warrior's family and social ties, but also announced his presence on the battlefield and right to wage war. It also considers the physiological and psychological effect of wearing armour, both on the wearer and those facing him in combat, arguing that the need for display in battle was deeper than any medieval cultural construct and was based in the fundamental biological drives of threat and warning. ROBERT W. JONES gained his PhD from Cardiff University.

The previously untold story of the violence in Congress that helped spark the Civil War In The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were beaten and bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance, particularly on the issue of slavery. These fights didn’t happen in a vacuum. Freeman’s dramatic accounts of brawls and thrashings tell a larger story of how fisticuffs and journalism, and the powerful emotions they elicited, raised tensions between North and South and led toward war. In the process, she brings the antebellum Congress to life, revealing its rough realities—the feel, sense, and sound of it—as well as its nation-shaping import. Funny, tragic, and rivetingly told, The Field of Blood offers a front-row view of congressional mayhem and sheds new light on the careers of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and other luminaries, as well as introducing a host of lesser-known but no less fascinating men. The result is a fresh understanding of the workings of American democracy and the bonds of Union on the eve of their greatest peril.

Earl J. Hess provides a narrative history of the use of fortifications--particularly trenches and other semi-permanent earthworks--used by Confederate and Union field armies at all major battle sites in the eastern theater of the Civil War. Hess moves beyond the technical aspects of construction to demonstrate the crucial role these earthworks played in the success or failure of field armies. A comprehensive study which draws on research and fieldwork from 300 battle sites, Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War is an indispensable reference for Civil War buffs and historians.

An accessible overview of Ireland's War of Independence, 1919-21. From the first shooting of RIC constables in Soloheadbeg, Co Tipperary, on 21 January 1919 to the truce in July 1921, the IRA carried out a huge range of attacks on all levels of British rule in Ireland. There are stories of humanity, such as the British soldiers who helped three IRA men escape from prison or the members of the British Army who mutinied in India after hearing about the reprisals being carried out by the Black and Tans in Ireland. The hundreds of thousands of people who celebrated the Centenary of the 1916 Rising with pride and joy are the same people who will appreciate the story of the Irish Republicans who battled against all odds in the next phase of the fight for Ireland between 1919 and 1921.

On the 19th September 1982 Kerry ran out in Croke Park chasing immortality. Victory over Offaly in the All-Ireland football final would secure them five titles in a row, a record certain never to be matched again. It had taken Offaly six heartbreaking years under manager Eugene McGee to drag themselves up from their lowest ebb, but now they stood on the cusp of a glorious reward. The result was a classic final that changed lives and dramatically altered the course of gaelic football history. The Kings of September is an epic story of triumph and loss, joy and tragedy, a story of two teams who illuminated a grim period in Irish life and enthralled a nation.

"Gardner's reading of a wide range of published and unpublished texts recovers a multifaceted vision of the South. For example, during the war, while its outcome was not yet a foregone conclusion, women's writings sometimes reflected loyalty and optimism; at other times, they revealed doubts and a wavering resolve. According to Gardner, it was only in the aftermath of defeat that a more unified vision of the southern cause emerged. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, white women - who remained deeply loyal to their southern roots - were raising fundamental questions about the meaning of southern womanhood in the modern era."--BOOK JACKET.