The Irish War of Independence was a sporadic guerrilla campaign taht lasted from January 1919 until July 1921. Michael Hopkinson makes full use of the recently opened files of the Bureau of Military Archives in Dublin, which contain valuable first-hand contemporary accounts of the war, meticulously piecing together the many disparate local actions to create a coherent narrative. He stresses the importance of local and contingent issues over the idea of a master plan developed by the Dublin-based republican leadership. The war was prosecuted ruthlessly by the Irish Republican Army which,...