Mick: The Real Michael Collins

by Peter Hart

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143038542
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/30/2007
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

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.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A triumph . . . Insights abound . . . Reads like a le Carre thriller. (The Irish Book Review)

This is the book that will unquestionably be the starting point for all future reflections on Collins. (The New Republic)

[Hart] succeeds in demystifying a legend. (The Boston Sunday Globe)

A fine biography . . . written with immense verve. (The New York Times Book Review)

Editorial Reviews

A triumph . . . Insights abound . . . Reads like a le Carre thriller. (The Irish Book Review)

This is the book that will unquestionably be the starting point for all future reflections on Collins. (The New Republic)

[Hart] succeeds in demystifying a legend. (The Boston Sunday Globe)

A fine biography . . . written with immense verve. (The New York Times Book Review)

From the Publisher

Peter Hart's "Mick," a fine biography, concentrates on Collins's work, the tasks he took on for the associations he joined and ultimately for the provisional government: minister of finance, a job he carried out brilliantly; director of intelligence, the main source of his reputation as a hero, daring beyond description; and commander in chief of the army, in which he acted as if he had indeed an army to inspect in full order and battle dress.
— The New York Times

Denis Donoghue

This enormous biography is interesting for two reasons. First, it provides a cool, unromantic look at the life of the young Irish revolutionary, and particularly at his gradual climb in the ranks of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) after the 1916 Easter Rising and at his decision to accept "the Treaty" that led to the independence of Ireland minus the Northern Ireland enclave. Hart, who teaches Irish studies at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, has used all available archives and has systematically separated the facts from the legend. Second, it is a study in biographer ambivalence. Hart's style is flat, like a police report, and shuns the eloquence that so often marked his subject's oratory. He makes valiant efforts to recognize Collins' strength, charisma, and decisiveness after a long period of deliberation and uncertainty. But he accuses Collins of not fully realizing "the uncontrollability of violence and its transformative power." Hart concludes that Collins was "the most successful politician in modern Irish history," whose triple legacy was independence, partition, and the IRA. It will be interesting to see how Hart's Irish readers react.

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