The controversy over Neil Jordan's Michael Collins film has ignited both controversy and renewed interest in the foundation years of the Irish State, which for decades were veiled quasi officially under Clouds of Unknowing. Though the illustrations are many and fascinating, the text is more than a mere accompaniment to them; it is lucid and informative in its own right and could well have been expanded to another fifty odd pages, on its merits. An appendix gives various quotes from the Treaty debates, and there is an index of the period's dramatis personae.