The Man Who Made Ireland: The Life and Death of Michael Collins

"Like Prometheus, Collins stole fire. Like Prometheus, he paid for his feat and much of what he set about doing remains undone. But his name burns brightly wherever the Irish meet. Michael Collins was the man who made Ireland possible". So begins Tim Pat Coogan in this highly-acclaimed biography that sat atop the best-seller lists of England and Ireland, and is now published in the U.S. for the first time. Michael Collins, affectionately known as "The Big Fellow" was just thirty-one years of age when on the morning of October 11, 1921, he sat down to negotiate Irish independence with one of the most formidable political teams that England ever assembled. Facing him were David Lloyd George, Lord Birkenhead, Austin Chamberlain, and Winston Churchill. The ensuing treaty of December 6 did not yield the unbroken island nation Collins had hoped for, but he prophetically termed it a "stepping stone" to today's Irish Republic. But, Coogan asserts, "all the other stepping stones to the tragedy