A detailed and revealing portrait of the world of the IRA, "Rebel Hearts" explains and uncovers the roots of the conflict in Northern Ireland through a series of profiles of IRA men. "As romantic as it is violent . . . Toolis has captured its pulse in prose that often approached poetry".--"San Francisco Chronicle".

For ten years Kevin Toolis investigated the lives of the IRA soldiers who wage a secret battle against the British State. His journeys took him from the back kitchens of Belfast, where men joked while making two-thousand-pound bombs, to prisons for interviews with men serving life sentences, and to the graveyards where mourners weep. Each chapter explores a world where history, faith, and human savagery determine life and death. At once moving and harrowing, Rebel Hearts is the most authoritative and insightful book ever written on the IRA.