Men That God Made Mad, by Derek Lundy

In a study that is both singular and brilliant, Lundy probes the mindset of Northern Irish Protestants through the lives of three ancestors. Robert Lundy was the governor of Londonderry who wished to capitulate to the Catholic army of James II. William Steel Dixon was an 18th-century Presbyterian minister who argued fiercely against the English colonists. Born in 1890, Billy Lundy, Derek's grandfather, was a shipyard riveter, "prejudiced, authoritarian and habituated to violence". Judicious and highly readable, this history is a revelation about modern Ireland.