It is little wonder that literature professor Clair Wills opens Dublin 1916: The Siege of the GPO with a quote by the French historian of memory Pierre Nora. This book owes a great debt to the Frenchman’s multivolume magnum opus Les Lieux de Mémoire (Paris, 1997). Wills offers not so much another study of the Easter Rising as she provides a history of the evolving memories and meanings of that event. Although Wills abstains from using any jargon or overt theory, the Rising and its focal point, the General Post Office (GPO) on Dublin’s O’Connell Street, are quietly cast as what Nora terms lieux de mémoire (places of memory) that embody an evolving sense of Irish national identity.

For many, the Easter Rising, which took place during Easter Week 1916, represents the founding act of modern Ireland, its commemoration similar to Independence Day in the United States or Bastille Day in France. For others, memory casts the events of that week as “a sectarian, violent putsch by an unelected group, a bloody rebellion against a democratically elected government” (3). More than just another sign of division between majorities in the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, differing views of the Rising, and efforts to co-opt it for contemporary political purposes, are a fact of life. The result is that memory of 1916 provides a fascinating window into the often-tortured realities of twentieth-century Irish history. By drawing on the approach pioneered by Nora, Wills is able to offer a different vision of modern Irish history than was previously available.

In the first two of five chapters, Wills recounts the events of Easter Week 1916 during which a small group of armed revolutionaries occupied sites around Dublin, the most famous of which was the then recently refurbished GPO. Although based on well-known sources, this recounting is useful for its focus on contemporary accounts and rumors regarding events in Dublin. There were stories of German landings, of planned backdoor invasions of England, and an early disconnect between the public perception and the private experience of events that ultimately made the creation of a Rising mythology that much easier. Various elements of that week almost immediately emerged as particularly important: a cavalry charge by British troops, the encouraging speeches given by leaders such as Patrick Pearse and James Connolly, the significance of barricades placed in Dublin streets, and the frequent comparisons between O’Connell Street and the trenches of northern France.

The final three chapters explore the changing shape of memory after the Rising. The dead were increasingly cast as martyrs who, Christ-like, sacrificed themselves so that Ireland might live. Rising veterans were heroes, often included in commemorations and shown on television. The two major political parties, Fianna Fáil and Cumann na nGaedheal (later Fine Gael), strove to grab the mantle of the Rising for themselves following the Irish Civil War—a task made no easier by the reality that many of the leaders of both parties fought in the Rising. Parades were held, poems and plays written and contested, facades of the GPO built and burned, and the public educated through school essay contests, television miniseries, blockbuster movies, and political pronouncements about the events of 1916 and their meanings. These are the strongest and most original chapters in Wills’s account.

While it might have been possible to write the story of 1916 and its memory by focusing exclusively on prominent leaders, Wills is also interested in everyday foot soldiers, playwrights and poets, schoolchildren, and the ordinary Dubliners. Not surprisingly, much of this treatment addresses how ideas about the Rising were transmitted—whether by messengers during the Rising itself; in Dublin theaters, via carefully stage-managed (though not always successfully executed) commemorative events; school essays; and poems written by both notable poets and those whose work will never grace the pages of any anthology of great Irish writers. While one might rightly ask just how many people saw controversial plays such as Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars when it debuted and spawned riots in 1926, Wills paints a convincing picture of memory creation by also discussing commemorative activities such as the installation of Oliver Sheppard’s statue “The Death of Cuchulainn” at the GPO in 1935 and well-attended events in Cork and Dublin. While it is not always possible to get into the minds of everyday people, the author convincingly shows that the changing face of 1916 memory was very much a product of widespread discourse and that many vectors helped shape perception of the Rising.

Ultimately, this book offers a fascinating study of the Easter Rising as a lieu de mémoire. The book offers a window not only into the Rising itself but more significantly into the history of post-Independence Ireland that is not possible using more conventional top-down political history or biography. Yet, at the same time, the decision to exclude footnotes in favor of a short bibliographic essay is disappointing. Although highly readable, most nonacademics will likely purchase this book in the hope of finding a more up-to-date military history of the Rising than is offered by Max Caulfield’s The Easter Rebellion (1965; repr., Boulder, CO, 1995) or the various other available texts. This is not what Wills sets out to provide. Meanwhile, academics anxious to travel with Wills through the twists and turns of national memory will be disappointed by the difficulty of tracking down her sources. Despite this complaint, Dublin 1916: The Siege of the GPO is a compelling and engaging book. It will work well in undergraduate Irish history survey courses, and scholars of modern Irish history would do well to include it in their libraries.