This is a superb, multi-layered history of the "intimate war" of this dark, iconic period in Cork which, between city and county, proved as troublesome as Belfast at the time: a sad tally of at least 750 dead and 900 wounded (peaking sharply in 1920-21) - a third of them civilians, nearly half victims of the IRA. Hart, a lecturer in Queen's, Belfast, and an Adjunct Professor in Newfoundland, delivers great humanity from his years of research, including interviews with protagonists, many of whom still cannot be identified. He begins each section with violent incidents - the murder of RIC Sergeant James O'Donoghue in 1920, followed by disproportionate, indiscriminate reprisals; the atrocity of the Kilmichael ambush by IRA men led by Tom Barry; revolutionary brothers Sean and Tom Hales (the latter, IRA commander at Beal na Blath); and crazed sectarian murders of local Protestants. But it's not all brain-spattered streets and country lanes: Hart painstakingly details these towns and rural communities in all their religious and class-bound variegation. A vivid, deeply affecting book which, against all the odds, even delivers a few hardy diamonds of local humour.