Most county studies that have come to define this century's historiography of the Irish Revolution allude in varying detail to the political coverage and leanings of newspapers in their relevant geographical areas. In this case study of Cork between 1910 and 1923, McCarthy successfully argues that newspapers are not just historical sources but were themselves important historical forces.

The unionist Cork Constitution's reporting of the Easter 1916 arms surrender by the city's Irish Volunteers, breaching the terms of the surrender agreement with British authorities, is cited as evidence of ‘the potential for newspapers to intrude on the narrative at critical junctures’ (p. 87). Indeed, the press was often as much part of the story as reporting it, examples provided including the September 1919 suppression of the Cork Examiner for publishing a Dáil Éireann loan advertisement. As McCarthy states, however, most newspapers’ objectivity was affected by their underlying political biases (p. 78). His insights into the politics and business interests of owners and editors like the Crosbie and Tivy families (publishers of the constitutional nationalist Cork Examiner and the unionist Cork Constitution, respectively), enrich our appreciation of such nuances. But he also fulfils his introductory promise to go beyond a mere survey of how Cork's newspapers of the long revolutionary decade treated key events in the most violent county in this period: he sets out to use those press outlets’ representations of events as a ‘microcosm of the wider conflict that engulfed Ireland’ (p. 14).

An exception to events elsewhere in the country, however, were the pre-revolutionary tensions within constitutional nationalism in Cork. This is reflected in the Cork Free Press, the mouthpiece of William O'Brien M.P.'s All-for-Ireland-League, a party which counted the city and county as one of its few political strongholds. McCarthy provides insights into the disillusioned nationalists who would play significant roles in the later republican movement. This refers not alone to O'Brien's readership but also to many of his staff, among them future Cork Corporation member and leading trade unionist Tadhg Barry. A Cork Free Press journalist who also used a pseudonym to pen a Skibbereen Eagle column, he was shot dead at Ballykinlar internment camp in 1921. The detailing of the journalistic contributions and political mindsets of staff like Barry and fellow ex-Free Press journalist (and future republican propagandist) Frank Gallagher make the author's research stand out. Using biographical information, memoirs and other sources, he identifies numerous contributors of columns and attributes specific reporting to otherwise-anonymous journalists and activists. Irish-language memoirs are used particularly advantageously, including those of Peadar Ó hAnnracháin and Ernest Blythe, both key figures in the running of the Skibbereen-based Southern Star, which was brought under Sinn Féin control in 1917.

Labour disputes and their impact on news production are dealt with in some detail, as the author points to the much greater industrial relations leverage of the printing fraternity ― through the Cork Typographical Society ― than that of their journalistic counterparts who were seemingly less enthusiastic about trade union activity. The plights and the usually impoverished backgrounds of Cork's newsboys are also well detailed. Women's almost-complete absence from the newspaper professions in the early twentieth century is alluded to, but some elaboration on the referenced occasional women's columns would have been welcome. McCarthy does, however, refer to the treatment of revolutionary violence against women. Although newspaper coverage of same (or lack thereof), including sexual violence, is not dealt with, more recent scholarly work on the topic is acknowledged.

The author's coverage of Cork's pre-1916 and Civil War republican newspapers is superb, including two short-lived 1914 titles, Fianna Fáil (financed and edited by Terence MacSwiney) and the Cork Celt. Both were forced to cease publication a few months into the Great War for their anti-recruitment editorialising. The print machinery of the latter's publisher, republican printer Patrick Corcoran, later became crucial to the anti-Treaty propaganda publishing that was moved from Cork city to the mountainous Kerry border area in the autumn of 1922. The research here offers new and illuminating insights into this mobile publishing operation under the direction of Erskine Childers, with the input of locals like Mary MacSwiney and emerging authors Michael O'Donovan (later Frank O'Connor) and Seán O'Faoláin. The impacts of destruction or dismantling of the city dailies’ presses by anti-Treaty forces are well detailed, including a forensic analysis of the decision to cease publishing the Cork Constitution in 1922.

Through sabotage, intimidation and censorship, this monograph ironically highlights how newspapers could sometimes achieve more in their suppression than in what they printed to highlight perceived excesses of the British administration and, later, the anti-Treaty republican I.R.A. However, McCarthy's meticulous detailing of the publishers, politics and printing of Cork's myriad newspapers in this period adds enormously to understanding of the role of journalism in the complexities of revolution in Ireland.