The central theme of this book – primarily a study of revolutionary activity in Kilkenny from 1916 to 1923 – is that the marble county's place in the telling of the Irish Revolution has been unfairly neglected or reduced. Walsh debunks Ernie O'Malley's dismissal of the county as slack during the War of Independence, drawing on an impressive array of documentary evidence – including the military service pensions. Walsh asserts correctly that Kilkenny in no way matched counties like Cork or Tipperary for revolutionary activity, though ‘not for want of trying’. This argument raises an important question: what exactly constitutes activity? Was there a revolutionary atmosphere in Kilkenny after 1916, and what impact did it have on life in the county? Have some previous studies placed too much emphasis on metrics of violence and death as markers of revolutionary activity?

Walsh's study treads a broadly chronological path, but like Conor McNamara's recent work on Galway, is compartmentalised along thematic lines. Despite the subtitle identifying the period 1900–23 as the book's timeframe, the first chapter (1900–15) deals only sparsely with the dynamics of pre-1916 nationalism in Kilkenny; this may be worth revisiting in the event of a future edition. The chapter on 1916 is well researched and features valuable mini-biographies of local persons connected to the Rising. The War of Independence is covered in three chapters. Walsh's knowledge of the local landscape shines through in the narrative portion, and in his analysis of the conflict he identifies leadership quality and underdeveloped intelligence gathering as key reasons for ‘stagnating’ I.R.A. activity in the county. The author found in Kilkenny's I.R.A. units a characteristic which distinguished them from contemporary revolutionary movements in Europe and beyond – a lack of cold ruthlessness, and a fear of indulging in actions which would antagonise the local population (epitomised, for example, by the Castlecomer I.R.A.’s reluctance to attack a public house frequented by the military, ‘due to the mental health of the owner's wife’). Notably, Walsh joins the growing consensus of historians who have found ‘no evidence of sectarianism’ which could be attributed to Kilkenny republicans. Local I.R.A. units claimed to have cordial relations with local Protestants, despite the intriguing fact that an ‘anti-I.RA. unit’ had been established by a small group of Protestant families in the south of the county.

The quietude of Kilkenny's gentle revolutionaries during the War of Independence contrasted with the county's comparatively violent experience of civil war. Walsh's comprehensive analysis of this conflict extends to five chapters, with one dedicated wholly to an account of fighting between pro- and anti-Treaty forces in Kilkenny city in May 1922. Here, the author's assertion that this episode of violence could be invoked by historians as an earlier commencement date for the Irish Civil War is problematic, and perhaps exaggerative. While the Kilkenny incident was undoubtedly a serious escalation, it was no more serious than the occupation of the Four Courts by anti-Treaty I.R.A .on 14 April, the clashes in Dublin days later, or the simmering tensions in counties like Westmeath, where incidents in Mullingar and Athlone in late April resulted in three fatalities.

There are some instances where Walsh's analysis could have been better framed by referencing a wider pool of existing literature. This he achieves when, for example, citing Marie Coleman's recent work on violence against women during the revolutionary period. However, in prefacing his account of the Civil War in Kilkenny, Walsh refers to ‘established faux history’ which taught that the conflict was fought over partition. No footnote is provided to explain what this ‘established’ history is. Similarly, key issues like labour (at one point, filed under a section dealing with truce-time ‘non-political gripes’), agrarianism and the decline of Redmondism (1916–18) – all widely covered in other regional or county studies – surely warranted further attention. This considered, the chapters on the development of a republican counter-state in Kilkenny, and the author's examination of ordinary life in the county during the revolution, give the study extra thematic weight. Walsh is to be commended for forensically and passionately tackling his central thesis, amply demonstrating that while not every Irish county was a Cork-like cauldron, revolution and its effects were keenly felt elsewhere in the provinces.