James Connolly

Ruth Dudley Edwards does an effective job of presenting the character of James Connolly, hero of the 1916 Easter Rising, in all his contradictions--socialist and nationalist, intellectual and day laborer, practical labor leader and socialist theoretician. She does a particularly good job of 1) selecting from Connolly's writings to show how he resolved, at least to his own satisfaction, the contradictions between socialism and nationalism, and 2) how the frustrations of his life as a radical newspaperman and labor organizer eventually led him to an alliance with romantic fatalist Pearse and the rest of the doomed nationalists of the Rising. The book is very short, and well worth the effort.