Michael Collins: The Man Who Made Ireland

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Summary: Slow Moving Writing Plagues Michael Collins Again!
Review: Anyone who knows the story of Michael Collins and who has seen the movie or read this book knows that people have a hard time showing what is truely a fascinating story. A slow-paced storyline and the tendency to over-examined inconsequential facts while under-examing crucial events(like his meeting with Churchill and his cronies) leaves the reading saying, "So What". Too bad becuase it is one hell of a story. PS- The movie was dreadfully boring.

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Summary: History of the Man Who Couldn't Be Caught
Review: As often noted, this is the definitive biography of Collins, Ireland's legendary rebel leader. It is by far the most detailed and best researched of the numerous works on Collins and it gives such a vivid picture of his complex personality that you feel you really know him by the end of it. All the facts of his life are there--the youthful years; the years in London working as a postal clerk and apprentice in investment houses; the participation in the 1916 rebellion and subsequent imprisonment, when he first rose to prominance in rebel circles; the harrowing years "on the run" as the mastermind behind the guerilla war of independence; and finally the years of the treaty negotiations and the civil war which led to his death. In addition, the descriptions of Collins' character, including flaws, are fascinating in showing a man of extraordinary intelligence, great charisma for both men and women, an almost obsessive love of his country and its people, great wit and humor, unrepentant ruthlessness in dealing with those spies and informants who threatened the cause, and a tremendous compassion and regard for his comrades, even when they became his adversaries in the civil war. For anyone who is interested in Ireland and its past, for anyone who wants to read about a man whose real life exploits were more riveting than fiction, this biography of the rough country boy with a limited formal education who became the most wanted man in the British Empire and then held his own in treaty negotiations with the most formidable statesmen in that Empire, is a must-read.

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Summary: thoroughly researched and easily approachable
Review: Coogan sets forth an amazingly intricate and thorough history of Collins, one of the greatest Irishmen of the twentieth century. His unblinking portrayal of Collins begins with his childhood in Clonakilty and takes the reader detailed step by detailed step to his death in Beal na mBlath and beyond. Coogan shows his background as a journalist, as his history is approachable and easily readable. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in Twentieth Century Irish history.

Rating:
Summary: thoroughly researched and easily approachable
Review: Coogan sets forth an amazingly intricate and thorough history of Collins, one of the greatest Irishmen of the twentieth century. His unblinking portrayal of Collins begins with his childhood in Clonakilty and takes the reader detailed step by detailed step to his death in Beal na mBlath and beyond. Coogan shows his background as a journalist, as his history is approachable and easily readable. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in Twentieth Century Irish history.

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Summary: Marvelous insight into a fascinating personality.
Review: Coogan's book gives a stirring account of a man many have never heard of. Although some might call him a terrorist, the complexity of the times, his desire to remove the repressive British regime, and his fight for the freedom of Ireland make for fascinating reading. It is ironic that the route that the IRA and Sinn Fein have taken today, who have decided that a political struggle will be more successful than a continued military one, was the reason for which Michael Collins was killed. This book is also a must for those wishing to understand the conflict in Northern Ireland today.

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Summary: Portrait of a hero
Review: I was never clear on the part Michael Collins played in Irish history, so I picked this book up. I got a much wider story, for Tim Pat Coogan does a great job of documenting the historic and social forces present during the time of the Irish Revolution and war for independance in the early 1920's. Coogan does a deft job of weaving a picture of Michael Collins' life, charged with the intensity of the times it describes, and fascinating in the depth of Colins' character. Read this book to learn the story of the Irish struggle early in this century for the right to be recognized as a country.

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Summary: The New Charismatic Leader ...?
Review: Irish Nationalism needs charismatic leaders, men who stand like the Founding Fathers in American history (and myth?). De Valera has been Found Out as a Catholic compromiser and (apparently worse) as someone who quietly sacrificed the North to keep a Catholic-Gaelic state in the South (read John Bowman's classic "De Valera and the Ulster Question"). Collins is the obvious next choice. Better still, Collins can stand as an open "Peace Process" man who believed that the 1921 Treaty gave the 'Freedom to achieve Freedom". What better logic to sell the Good Friday Agreement to recalcitrant republicans ? Though the book was published long before the Agreement, the Peace Process was in the air since the early nineties, and Coogan is well-known for republican sympathies. Even better, Collins conspired with the Northern republicans to subvert the Northern state - so can be sold (again) as an ambiguous figure who did not "betray the North". De Valera even suspected that this reversal of the historical verdict would come to pass, though his traducing Collins' memory does him little credit. Was Collins "the greatest man in Irish history". I think the title of this edition completely overblows Collins' role, if fact if anyone made Ireland in the sense meant it was William T. Cosgrave, the first Priomh-Aire (Prime Minister)and then De Valera himself. T.Ryle Dwyer's description of Collins as the 'man who won the war' is far more accurate - but war-winners are not always the best state-makers. Collins' advantages for a heroic pose are manifold - he died before the really nasty decisions had to be taken, and before the cleanup after the Civil War set the tone of the Irish Free State/ Republic of Ireland for generations. Coogan attempts to give the answers, mostly favourable to Collins. But somehow I wonder if Ireland hadn't got the best of Collins before he died. He seems to me to be almost addicted to conspiracy and back-door deals, not exactly the man to build up a democratic state. His nearest European equivalent is Pilsudski of Poland, a dedicated patriot and great soldier, but who eventually became a military dictator. For all that, read this book and judge for yourselves. Read also Coogan's "De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow" which is a companion to this volume.

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Summary: brilliant biography of a brilliant man....
Review: Michael Collins is arguably the greatest Irish hero of modern times, and this book shows the difficult journey road Collins took to acheive that. Collins comes across as a man who cared little for personal fame, but rather as one whose entire being was focused on freeing Ireland. (Would-be urban guerillas please note: Collins achieved his goals by attacking military targets only, not government buildings with day cares inside them..)I agree with a previous reviewer that more of an overview of Ireland in the early years of the 20th century would have been helpful plus the "Martyrs of '16" are not given a lot of space but this is about Collins after all...The Pease brothers, Conolly, Plunkett, Clark etc were Collins forerunners (and in Conolly's case) his inspiration. Even today almost 80 years after his tragic death in an ambush, Collins' gravesite in Dublin is still well visited, and you will almost always see flowers there, proof of how the people of Ireland think of "The Big Guy".....

Rating:
Summary: brilliant biography of a brilliant man....
Review: Michael Collins is arguably the greatest Irish hero of modern times, and this book shows the difficult journey road Collins took to acheive that. Collins comes across as a man who cared little for personal fame, but rather as one whose entire being was focused on freeing Ireland. (Would-be urban guerillas please note: Collins achieved his goals by attacking military targets only, not government buildings with day cares inside them..)I agree with a previous reviewer that more of an overview of Ireland in the early years of the 20th century would have been helpful plus the "Martyrs of '16" are not given a lot of space but this is about Collins after all...The Pease brothers, Conolly, Plunkett, Clark etc were Collins forerunners (and in Conolly's case) his inspiration. Even today almost 80 years after his tragic death in an ambush, Collins' gravesite in Dublin is still well visited, and you will almost always see flowers there, proof of how the people of Ireland think of "The Big Guy".....

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Summary: Defender of a Culture, Under Occupation
Review: Michael Collins was an extraordinary man, the inventor, it is said, of modern urban guerilla warfare; the man who led the war to end 700 years of British occupation of Ireland. Here was a man that was not a cog in in some vast socio-economic machine, whose only desire is "to just get along." He was one of those who didn't experience the benefits of the coexistence of two cultures in one land, because one of them was politically and economically savaging the other.

He did not have as his primary goal in life to accumulate the accouterments of a materialistic civilization for himself, nor did he ever have a mortgage to pay. He never owned a car. He never formed a family. He never knew such idiots who populate the safety committees of the industrial organizations in our own time, nor the phonies who infest our academies, longing for tenure. He loved his culture, as it was, and resented outsiders who had only scorn for it.

He was a leader of men, a man of action, a stickler for detail, who always knew what he wanted to accomplish. His physical courage was unimaginable to most men, even to those of his own time and place. His outstanding political skills and ability to do what was required to achieve the achievable was unmatched by any of the politicos and hotheads who surrounded him.

His primary task in the rebellion was in counter-intelligence, which he came to see required the assassination of informants and torturers, detectives and G-men, and the higher-ups of the British intelligence services who directed it all and placed a price on his head. This culminated in a "Bloody Sunday" in which his men attacked the "Cairo Gang" in their lodgings, some still in their beds, killing 19 of them. The Brits retaliated with a massacre of unarmed spectators at a football match, but ultimately it resulted in the opening of negotiations. Incredibly, Collins was chosen to lead the negotiating team, and wound up across the table from Lloyd George, Austen Chamberlin, and Winston Churchill. He brought home an agreement for the Free State.

Coogan tells his tale very thoroughly, at length, and with a satisfying balance of an attention to fact, considered speculation, and telling anecdote. He is an accomplished historian who knows his subject intimately. The author has written on the order of a dozen books on the modern history of Ireland, and is widely recognized for his authority, but not necessarily for an "objectivity" that belies the need for drawing lessons that should be the goal of any historian.

The book is at times, perhaps, a little too detailed for the general reader, but it is something of a "definitive biography", so I can forgive him for this. It is over 500 pages long with a very good bibliography, footnotes, and a terrific index. The 17 pictures are glossy and clear and add a lot to the story.

One of the most rewarding of things about reading this book is that it led me, I think, to a greater understanding of the events in Iraq, also suffering under an occupation by a hostile power, being fought by patriots and coreligionists in an urban setting, whose enemies from another land and religion label them terrorists and murderers.