Through vivid accounts and recollections, this book shows how the Emergency period in Irish History was a triumph of peaceful methods over the tradition of physical force. Through statesmanship, not violence, Eamon de Valera was able to secure Irish independence and sovereignty, save the nation from war and firmly establish that there was only one government, one army, and one legitimate state within Eire, and that was the state of which he was Taoiseach.

The book contains interviews with those who were intimately involved in the Irish cultural, social and intellectual movements in the 1940s, as well as volunteers from the IRA, Garda officers, bank employees, civil servants, post office workers, as well as those serving in the British and Irish Armies.