A restless genius beset by extremism

The Devil’s Deal The IRA, Nazi Germany, and the Double Life of Jim O’Donovan By David O’Donoghue New Island, €19

No revolutionary movement ever finds itself short of extremists. And Jim O’Donovan, the subject of David O’Donoghue’s thoroughly researched and cleanly written new book, was an extremist of a peculiar and fascinating kind.

O’Donovan was a scientist, a publisher and an entrepreneur who became a bombmaker for Michael Collins’s guerrilla army, an anti-Treaty ...