Good journalism captures and re-animates an historic moment. The shocking events documented in this book--which were unquestionably a defining moment in Ulster's short but troubled history--occurred nearly 30 years ago but come off the pages as if they happened yesterday. The authors graphically recreate the the events at Bogside, Londonderry, a nationalist enclave in a bitterly divided Province, involving British paratroopers on 30 January, 1972, during the course of a civil rights protest march. These events record that 13 Catholic civilians (more than likely unarmed, as the authors argue) were killed and a further 16 were wounded. The episode still reverberates as an emotional and mental obstacle towards an enduring peace process in the Province.

The authors, two distinguished journalists who investigated the events for The Sunday Times at the time, have re-visited their notebooks, re-interviewed their eye-witnesses and have had access to declassified documents and new statements from the soldiers involved. What they have pieced together is a moving, often heart-rending narrative whose immediacy vividly recaptures the bravery and brutality which arose out of the carnage on that day. --Michael Hatfield