This is a unique work filled with passion and violence, with humanity and inhumanity. It is the story of Northern Ireland troubles told as never before; it is not concerned with the political bickering buth with the lives of those who have suffered and deaths which have resulted from more than three decades of conflict. The authors - four of them Belfast-born and the fifth an American - are journalists and historians. For over a decade, they have examined every single death that was directly caused by the troubles. Their research has seen them interview witnessess, scour published material and draw on a huge range of investigative sources to produce a work of epic proportions. Never before has conflict anywhere in the world been subjected to such meticulous scrutiny. Lost Lives traces the origins of the conflict from the firing of the first shots, through the carnage of the 1970s and 1980s to the republican and loyalist ceasefires and beyond. All the casualties are here: the RUC officer, the young soldier, the IRA volunteer, the loyalist paramilitary, the Catholic mother, the Protestant worker, the newborn baby. Each account is impossible to ignore. As a reference book, Lost Lives is indispensable; as a landscape of history painted in fine detail it is unique. For anyone interested in Northern Ireland - or in the human cost of conflict everywhere - this is destined to be the defining work.