Kevin Toolis investigated the lives of men and women who, for the twenty-five years of the IRA's war with Britain formed the backbone of its effort. Each chapter explores a world in which history and the republican (and loyalist) interpretation of it dominate lives and deaths. Rebel Hearts does not seek to explain the roots of the conflict in Northern Ireland in a direct historical narrative form, but constructs, and reconstructs, its history through a series of connected and highly detailed individual portraits.The book is now updated with two long new chapters on all the latest developments.

'One of the strengths of Kevin Toolis's compelling, chilling, coldly brilliant book is that it reawakens the mind to the reality of why they took place ... easily the best book I have read on the Troubles' John Sweeney, Literary Review

'An honest and important book, essential for anyone who wants to assess what has been happening for the past twenty-five years in 'Northern Ireland' and what is likely to happen next' Robert Kee, Irish Times