This is a "popular" life, a little simplistic or lurid in certain areas, but also clear minded and scrupulous; though it is unlikely to displace Tim Pat Coogan's version of Collins's tragically short career, it is less densely detailed, assumes no special grasp of the period or of Irish politics in general, and has the merit of being immediately accessible in approach. Contrary to the geniality usually associated with him, Collins is revealed as often brusque and overbearing, a workaholic, as we would say today, a man of great nervous and physical stamina who nevertheless was capable of emotional collapse at the loss of friends and valued subordinates. His organising ability is shown to have been just as good as was claimed, though the famous, or infamous, mass shooting of the "Cairo gang" of British intelligence officers was in fact partly botched.
The Treaty negotiations, always a sore area, seem to have been hampered on the Irish side by a lack of proper briefing of the delegates and by an initial lack of understanding between them. In the end, Mackay views Collins as potentially an army strongman, rather on the lines of Pilsudski in Poland, who would have invaded Northern Ireland once he had cleared the decks and got the Irish Army into proper shape a debatable conclusion, perhaps? Michael Collins in His Own Words, edited by Francis Costello (Gill & Macmillan, £8.99 in UK), draws on his speeches, writings, letters and other sources, and shows that in spite of occasional lapses into period rhetoric and sentimentality, he possessed a clear, consistent political vision and had also thought out in some detail the future of the Irish economy.
Collins's speeches defending the Treaty also read very cogently, particularly those made in the Dail debates which led to ratification by a narrow margin.